On Beauty’s Loom A Healing Art is Woven

For Baldur, the Fairest and Wisest of them All

Say, pain’s resolution in beauty is woven,

And on that loom the clashing forces find

Their transcendent harmony at last, as fairest

Judgements settle strife, returning frith

To those forgotten of their kin- or kithship.

Beauty no less wise is, and such wisdom

Is, at heart, for knowing how to bring

To concord what discordant strained or ripp’d

The weeping heart to woe, and hope restore :

And all these precious benefices beauty

Gives, if we will seek sincerely for it.

Beauty blends, and order gives, restores

To shape misshapen forms, and finds what fits

The all-around equation of the heart ;

And thus returns proportion to the world

Where it was lost, and lays the firmest ground

For good to prosper, that each being might

Its own fair ratio to the world discover,

Thriving thus, and giving thrive in turn

To all that good surrounds it. So our soul

The storm of what awry is tossed may take

And turn it on the wheel of wisdom, form

Replenish full, and thus give heal to that

Which ill did threaten scatter balanced form.

And in that balanced concord we may find

Such sheer adornment, and a blessed salve

Assuaging what did tug and tear the heart

That we may beauty call it truly – more :

The genius of the resolution praise

As most creative might, imagination

Wild and beneficent, to find

A way to contradictions midwife, giving

Birth to something new and lovely. This

With reason we may call creation. Thus :

There is no art a healing art is not.