Zenocrate tamburlaine
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Lament for Zenocrate
Black is the beauty of the brightest day,
The golden belle of heaven's eternal fire,
That danced with glory on the silver waves,
Now wants the fuel that inflamed his beams:
And all with faintness and for foul disgrace,
He binds his temples with a frowning cloud,
Ready to darken earth with endless night:
Zenocrate that gave him light and life,
Whose eyes shot fire from their ivory bowers,
And tempered every soul with lively heat,
Now by the malice of the angry skies,
Whose jealousy admits no second mate,
Draws in the comfort of her latest breath
All dazzled with the hellish mists of death.
Now walk the angels on the walls of heaven,
As sentinels to warn th'immortal souls,
To entertain divine Zenocrate.
Apollo, Cynthia, and the ceaseless lamps
That gently looked upon this loathsome earth,
Shine downwards now no more, but deck the heavens
To entertain divine Zenocrate.
The crystal springs whose taste illuminates
Refined eyes with an eternal sight,
Like tried silver runs through Paradise
To entertain divine Zenocrate.
The Cherubin
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Xenocrates on Plato, Pythagoras and the Poets
Xenocrates on Plato, Pythagoras and the Poets John Dillon, Trinity College Dublin A salient feature of the main philosophical schools of Antiquity, in the decades and generations after their foundation, is the (generally sympathetic) exegesis of the works and thought of their founder, and the (generally critical) exegesis of earlier figures, prior to the foundation of the school in question, whether philosophical or literary. We can see this in the case not only of the Platonic Academy, but of the Peripatetic, Stoic and Epicurean Schools – though the Epicureans are, notoriously, most faithful of all the Schools to their Founder, even as they are savagely critical of all previous thinkers, even the Atomists, to whom they should have been particularly grateful. This concern with ‘orthodoxy’ is not something imposed from above, as would be the case in a hierarchical religious system, but a concern generated from within, to remain true to the spirit – even if not always to the letter – of the Founder, while also reinterpreting the Founder
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Lament For Zenocrate Poem by Christopher Marlowe
Black is the beauty of the brightest day,
The golden belle of heaven's eternal fire,
That danced with glory on the silver waves,
Now wants the fuel that inflamed his beams:
And all with faintness and for foul disgrace,
He binds his temples with a frowning cloud,
Ready to darken earth with endless night:
Zenocrate that gave him light and life,
Whose eyes shot fire from their ivory bowers,
And tempered every soul with lively heat,
Now by the malice of the angry skies,
Whose jealousy admits no second mate,
Draws in the comfort of her latest breath
All dazzled with the hellish mists of death.
Now walk the angels on the walls of heaven,
As sentinels to warn th'immortal souls,
To entertain divine Zenocrate.
Apollo, Cynthia, and the ceaseless lamps
That gently looked upon this loathsome earth,
Shine downwards now no more, but deck the heavens
To entertain divine Zenocrate.
The crystal springs whose taste illuminates
Refined eyes with an eternal sight,
Like tried silver runs through Paradise
To entertain divine Zenocrate.
The Cherubins an
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