O many a shaft, at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant And many a word, at random spoken, May soothe or wound a heart that's broken
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It happens so suddenly. We are going about our own mundane tasks when - a phrase of music, a shaft of sunlight on a snowy roof, a handful of yellow butterflies, or the arc of a bird diving to the earth, pierces us. For one brief moment, we are lifted out of our daily routine into the untold realms of light and beauty. Then the moment is gone. We are back on Earth - but we are not the same.
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Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows In yonder West: the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes, And great cloud-continents of sunset-seas.
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So the struck eagle, stretch'd upon the plain, No more through rolling clouds to soar again, View'd his own feather on the fatal dart, And wing'd the shaft that quiver'd in his heart.
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The shaft of the arrow had been feathered with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction.
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I would not unduly praise the virtue of restraint. It is often merely temperamental. But it is not always a sign of coldness. It may be pride. There can be nothing more humiliating than to see the shaft of one's emotion miss the mark of either laughter or tears. Nothing more humiliating! And this for the reason that should the mark be missed, should the open display of emotion fail to move, then it must perish unavoidably in disgust or contempt.
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You can drop a mouse down a thousand-yard mine shaft and, on arriving at the bottom, it gets a slight shock and walks away. A rat would probably be killed, though it can fall safely from the eleventh story of a building, a man is broken, a horse splashes.
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For many children, joy comes as the result of mining something unique and wondrous about themselves from some inner shaft.
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He who has provoked the shaft of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.
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