“Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why
This charm is wasted on the earth and sky,
Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing,
Then beauty is its own excuse for Being.”

—  Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Rhodora http://www.emersoncentral.com/poems/rhodora.htm
1840s, Poems (1847)

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Ralph Waldo Emerson 727
American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

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