Wisely the God enwraps in fuliginous night
the future's outcome, and laughs
if mortals are anxious
beyond mortality's bound.
Take care to deal equably
with what is present.
And to live only for today requires us to rise up in rebellion against the tyranny of material possessions. We rave about democracy in public, yet live beneath a perpetual despotism in private. In our obsequious devotion to objects, we are hostage to the vicissitudes of the transitory. Nay, we covet illusions, as though covetousness were not vile enough. "Envy," observes Bertrand Russell, "consists in seeing things, not in themselves, but in their relations". Ozimandian externals affirm in the derelict decrepitude of dead things their Circean mastery. Few are the rebels.
A happy life and mastery
over himself shall be his who daily
can say : 'I have lived'...
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