Touchstone II

Although i stand by my first touchstone from Somtimes a Great Notion I find that there a hundreds of touchstones that i read, hear, dream every day. A couple years ago in another Class with Dr. Sexson we were asked to read Ovid's Metamorphoses. This entire book is a touchstone, as we discussed it is perhaps the golden touchstone. Admittingly, i have not read it in it's entirety but from time to time i pick it up and read a few of the stories here and there. My favorite however, still remains, as it did when i took the class a passage from the story of Pythagoras. it reads:
For all things change, but no thing dies.
The spirit wanders: here and there, at will,
the soul can journey from an animal
into a human body, and from us
to beasts; it occupies a body, but
it never perishes.

I really don't see how that can ever be topped.

This passage embodies almost everything that we have learned in class, almost everything that one can hope to learn in their ENTIRE LIVES. And i don't simply like it for its infinite didactic qualities, it is purely beauty. it is pure poetry.

in these few lines, there holds all. this is anagogy at its finest. Its hard to even discuss something so grand, but what Ovid says here, is the same thing that Frye talks about when he talks about myth. All things are all, they may take on different forms, different means of expression but they are all reincarnations of our previous world.

These lines alone are a defense of poetry. I feel that we can only attempt to say what is said here when we speak of the value of literature. In my defense i try to capture these sentiments, i feel that everyone does, and in a sense that is the point. poetry cannot exist devoid of life, for they are one in the same. each mirrors the other and in doing so they are forever connected. its hard for me to say more. i try to do so in my defense for more (well more of the same i should say, as everything is) look there.