Feeling the Glow of Past Life
The content of our
truth depends upon our appropriating the historical foundation. Our own power of generation lies in the
rebirth of what has been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back,
nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophizing is to be genuine our thoughts
must arise from our own source. Hence all appropriation of tradition proceeds
from the intentness of our own life. The more determinedly I exist, as myself,
within the conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the language
of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of its life.
— Karl
Jaspers (born February 23, 1883)
When I Have Fears That I May Cease
To Be
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love! — then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
— John Keats (died February 23, 1821)
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