Poe said that "the tone of beauty is sadness," but he was evidently thinking

from cause to effect, not contrariwise, for sadness is rarely a producer of

beauty--that is peculiarly the province of joy.

 

The exquisite beauty of a sunset is not exhilarating but tends to a sort of

melancholy that is not far from delight The haunting beauty of deep, quiet music

holds more than a tinge of sadness. The lovely minor cadences of bird song at

twilight are almost depressing.

 

The reason we are affected to sadness by certain forms of placid beauty is

twofold: movement is stimulating and joy-producing, while quietude leads to

reflection, and reflection in turn often brings out the tone of regretful

longing for that which is past; secondly, quiet beauty produces a vague

aspiration for the relatively unattainable, yet does not stimulate to the

tremendous effort necessary to make the dimly desired state or object ours.

 

We must distinguish, for these reasons, between the sadness of beauty and the

joy of beauty. True, joy is a deep, inner thing and takes in much more than the

idea of bounding, sanguine spirits, for it includes a certain active

contentedness of heart. In this chapter, however the word will have its

optimistic, exuberant connotation--we are thinking now of vivid, bright-eyed,

laughing joy.

 

Musical, joyous tones constitute voice charm, a subtle magnetism that is

delightfully contagious. Now it might seem to the desultory reader that to take