To Helen -- Poe

Helen, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,
The weary, wayworn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
to the glory that was Greece
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche
How statue-like I see thee stand,
The agate lamp within thy hand!
Ah, Psyche, from the regions which
Are Holy Land!

Zeuxis Grapes

Zeuxis lived in the 5th century BC and was said to be the first to use sfumato. According to Pliny the Elder, the realism of his paintings was such that birds tried to eat the painted grapes.

Puberty -- Edvard Munch

Part of Edvard Munch's 'Frieze of Life' series. Also included are the Dance, everybody's favorite and his most widely known composition THE SCREAM, and this one.

Even this one is somehow extremely haunting in its aspect.

The Man with the Blue Guitar -- Stevens

The man bent over his guitar,

A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.
They said, "You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are."
The man replied, "Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar."
And they said then, "But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,
A tune upon the blue guitar
Of things exactly as they are."

Image Credit: The Old Guitarist by Picasso from his Blue Period, which proceeded from the suicide of his close friend Casegemas

Famous Last Words

Samuel Johnson - ‘Iam moriturus’ (I who am about to die)
Lord Byron - ‘Come, come, no weakness; let’s be a man to the last!’
Emily Dickinson - ‘I must go in, the fog is rising’
Robert Louis Stevenson - ‘What’s that? Do I look strange?’
Anton Chekhov - ‘It’s a long time since I drank champagne’
Mark Twain - ‘Death, the only immortal, who treats us alike, whose peace and refuge are for all. The soiled and the pure, the rich and the poor, the loved and the unloved’
Leo Tolstoy - ‘We all reveal … our manifestations … This manifestation is over … That’s all’
Franz Kafka - ‘Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me … in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others’), sketches, and so on, (is) to be burned unread’
Virginia Woolf - ‘I feel certain that I’m going mad again …’
James Joyce - ‘Does nobody understand?’

Machiavelli's "The Prince"

"The prince must acquir eand keep his principality; and the means by which he does this will always be praised & judged honorable by all, because the common people will be convinced by appearances and by the end result." - Machiavelli


Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli wrote this in The Prince, which served as his appeal to the Florentine rulers of the de'Medici family, in power during his prisonment. As the title The Prince implies, Machiavelli was in favor of a monarchy, and herein delineates the pragmatic stratagems a ruler must undertake in order to keep for himself the throne, which include: political opportunism; cunning; deviousness; boldness; and at least exuding a patina of compassion, good faith, integrity, kindness, and religion. No wonder, then, that the term "Macchiavellian" is used today to characterize a political figure who manipulates. The quote above reigns among the other cynical views of human nature which color The Prince, and this one particularly is Machiavelli's justification of the maxim: the ends justify the means. This isn't to say that his arguments weren't strong; he made countless mention of ancient rulers (e.g. Antiochus, Hiero of Syracuse, etc.) for more QED effect; moreover, he exhibits most interestingly the tacit assumptions as well as the freshly-formed ideas and attitudes of his time and circumstances, and emanates a sense of glory that always accompanies large-scale political changes like the Medici assumption of power in Florence. All things considered, this essay is arguably hallowed Scripture for a great many of our world's leaders hitherto.