Truth and Beauty

Today's Poetry Friday round-up can be found at Farm School.

Wombat has a book of patterns, which he likes me to draw for him and which he attempts to copy. He likes dots and stripes and wiggles, but his favourite pattern of all is a spiral. Looking at pictures of nature in his books, he loves it when I point out the spiral in a seashell or flower. Yeti is a mathematician, and many years ago he introduced me to the wonderous truths of fractals and natural geometry. When I think of truth and beauty, I start spouting Keats and Wordsworth and the English Romantics. Today I thought I'd go looking for some new (to me) inspiration.

Each and All
(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

The delicate shells lay on the shore;
The bubbles of the latest wave
Fresh pearls to their enamel gave;
And the bellowing of the savage sea
Greeted their safe escape to me;
I wiped away the weeds and foam,
And fetched my sea-born treasures home;
But the poor, unsightly, noisome things
Had left their beauty on the shore
With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.
...
Then I said, "I covet Truth;
Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat,—
I leave it behind with the games of youth."
As I spoke, beneath my feet
The ground-pine curled its pretty wreath,
Running over the club-moss burrs;
I inhaled the violet's breath;
Around me stood the oaks and firs;
Pine cones and acorns lay on the ground;
Above me soared the eternal sky,
Full of light and deity;
Again I saw, again I heard,
The rolling river, the morning bird;—
Beauty through my senses stole,
I yielded myself to the perfect whole.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My personal offering this week is a fibonacci poem.

Fern
frond
tight furled
whorling curled
geometric world
uncoiling mysteries beyond
truth beauty unfolding behold golden spirals turn.

(MW)