The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)
Context: Is not the highest honour his who from the worst hath drawn the best;
May not your Maker make the world from matter, an it suit His hest? Nay more, the sordider the stuff the cunninger the workman's hand:
Cease, then, your own Almighty Power to bind, to bound, to understand.
“There is power in understanding the journey of others to help create your own.”
Søren Kierkegaard, Eighteen Upbuilding Discourses, Hong p. 37
1840s, Upbuilding Discourses (1843-1844)
Beware of Pity (1939)
“All these I place,
By God's almighty help and grace,
Between myself and the powers of darkness.”
"The Rune of St. Patrick", derived from "The Lorica", both traditionally attributed to St. Patrick, translation by James Clarence Mangan, published in Lyrica Celtica (1896); also in Celtic Christianity : Ecology and Holiness (1987) by Christopher Bamford and William Parker Marsh, p. 54
Context: At Tara today in this fateful hour
I place all Heaven with its power,
And the sun with its brightness,
And the snow with its whiteness,
And fire with all the strength it hath,
And lightning with its rapid wrath,
And the winds with their swiftness along their path,
And the sea with its deepness,
And the rocks with their steepness,
And the earth with its starkness
All these I place,
By God's almighty help and grace,
Between myself and the powers of darkness.
The Camelot Project interview (1996)
Context: When the legend is retold, it mirrors the reality of the time, and one can learn from studying how various authors have attempted to retell the story. I don't think we have an obligation to change it radically. I think that if we ever move too far from the basic story, we would lose something very precious. I don't, for instance, approve of fantasy that attempts to go back and rewrite the Middle Ages until it conforms to political correctness in the twentieth century. That removes all the benefit from reading the story. If you don't understand other people in their time and why they did what they did, then you don't understand your own past. And when you lose your past, you lose some potential for your own future.
