• And a poet said, Speak to us of Beauty.
•    And he answered:
•    Where shall you seek beauty, and how shall you find her unless she herself be your way and your guide?
•    And how shall you speak of her except she be the weaver of your speech?
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•    The aggrieved and the injured say, “Beauty is kind and gentle.
•    Like a young mother half-shy of her own glory she walks among us.”
•    And the passionate say, “Nay, beauty is a thing of might and dread.
•    Like the tempest she shakes the earth beneath us and the sky above us.”
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•    The tired and the weary say, “Beauty is of soft whisperings.  She speaks in our spirit.
•    Her voice yields to our silences like a faint light that quivers in fear of the shadow.”
•    But the restless say, “We have heard her shouting among the mountains,
•    And with her cries came the sound of hoofs, and the beating of wings and the roaring of lions.”
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•    At night the watchmen of the city say, “Beauty shall rise with the dawn from the east.”
•    And at noontide the toilers and the wayfarers say, “We have seen her leaning over the earth from the windows of the sunset.”
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•    In winter say the snow-bound, “She shall come with the spring leaping upon the hills.”
•    And in the summer heat the reapers say, “We have seen her dancing with the autumn leaves, and we saw a drift of snow in her hair.”
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•    All these things have you said of beauty,
•    Yet in truth you spoke not of her but of needs unsatisfied,
•    And beauty is not a need but an ecstasy.
•    It is not a mouth thirsting nor an empty hand stretched forth,
•    But rather a heart enflamed and a soul enchanted.
•    It is not the image you would see nor the song you would hear,
•    But rather an image you see though you close your eyes and a song you hear though you shut your ears.
•    It is not the sap within the furrowed bark, nor a wing attached to a claw,
•    But rather a garden for ever in bloom and a flock of angels for ever in flight.
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•    People of Orphalese, beauty is life when life unveils her holy face.
•    But you are life and you are the veil.
•    Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
•    But you are eternity and you are the mirror.

-Kahlil Gibran.  The Prophet

FIELD NOTES
ISO: 50 @ 1.60 Seconds
24mm @ F/13