Handmaid

“I should prefer that only those be called works of art in which the artist had occasion to show himself as such and in which beauty was his first and ultimate aim. None of the others, which betray too obvious traces of religious conventions, deserve this name because in their case the artist did not create art for art’s sake, but his art was merely a handmaid of religion, which stressed meaning for beauty, or, out of consideration for art and the more refined taste of the period, has ceased to emphasize it to such a degree that beauty alone would seem to be the sole object. […] Paint for us, you poets, the pleasure, the affection, the love and delight which beauty brings, and you have painted beauty itself.” – Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781).
 
In the mute tongue of painters 
Urania’s wand must 
Into her starsphere 
Ever be thrust 
 
But in other voices 
This handmaid can read 
Inscribed celestial 
Fates mortals heed 

Reduced and visible 
To action suggested, or, 
In progressive imitations, 
Invisible and infinite 

A shield forever turning in a forge.