SKU: L0075

The Romantic Poets Collection - -A thing of Beauty Is a Joy Forever-. Hand crafted by Incolay Studios of California in the year 1978. Plate size approx 10 inches. Suggested retail $90.00.

Inspired by the same intense feeling for the eternity of beauty which was immor¬talized by John Keats in his 4,000-line, epic masterpiece Endymion, Gayle Bright Appleby has mastered the vision of undying youth from the legend of Endymion and Cynthia in this, her second sculpture in The Romantic Poets Collection.

Delicately carved in genuine Incolay stone, -A Thing of Beauty Is a Joy Forever- depicts the moment of Endymion's awakening from his dream of the goddess Cynthia.

As she kneels by the sleeping shepherd, Cynthia's delicate, smoothly contoured features seem the epitome of Classic perfection. She is, as Keats intended in his Endymion, acelestial being descended from the heavens.

In contrast, the fully sculpted figure of Endymion is entirely human. His muscles are strung and knotted across an angular frame that has known more of hunger than ambrosia. Though he sleeps, mortal concerns still furrow his gaunt face.

Together the two, goddess and man, are sheltered by a large Eucalyptus which shields them as much from the eyes of the gods, Zeus and Hera, as from the elements. As a final symbolic touch, hollyhocks—the holy flower—and lambs of innocence adorn the foreground.

We see Cynthia as Keats described her—the image of beauty and grace. She is the perfect being about whom Endymion has been dreaming. The gifted young sculptress has taken Endymion out of the mists of imagination and given him form and substance.

In another moment, according to the poem, he will awake and the dream-vision will be gone, leaving only an unbearable yearning. So real is the Cynthia of his dream that he sets out on a long pilgrimage to find her. He is ultimately successful but only after his adventures along the way force him to learn that spiritual maturity is necessary to attain ideal love.