10 August 2006

on the ever-lasting need for narrative

From the Iliad, in Alexander Pope's translation (Book 6, lines 181-188):

Like leaves on trees the race of man is found,
Now green in youth, now with'ring on the ground,
Another race the following spring supplies,
They fall successive, and successive rise;
So generations in their course decay,
So flourish these, when those are past away.
But if thou still persist to search my birth,
Then hear a tale that fills the spacious earth.

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