People who remember court madness through pain, the pain of the perpetually recurring death of their innocence; people who forget court another kind of madness, the madness of the denial of pain and the hatred of innocence; and the world is mostly divided between madmen who remember and madmen who forget.
“Bid the warbling Nine retire:
Venus, string thy servant’s lyre:
Love shall be my endless theme:
Pleasure shall triumph over fame:
And when these maxims I decline,
Apollo, may thy fate be mine:
May I grasp at empty praise;
And the lose the nymph, to gain the bays.”
Matthew Prior | “In Imitation of Anacreon”