A platonick song of the soul

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M. M. Mahood

The strength of the seventeenth-century writers lies in their power to meet a challenge which later religious poets evaded. Donne and his followers are humanists, alive to all new discoveries about the physical world and the nature of man; but they are theocentric humanists, able to reconcile these discoveries with the central tenets of their faith as Christians. This book attempts to trace this reintegration in the work of the Metaphysical poets and of Milton, and suggests that in this reintegration lies the real affinity between seventeenth-century poetry and the Baroque mode in the visual arts.

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Macrobius

Macrobius's Saturnalia, an encyclopedic celebration of Roman culture written in the early fifth century CE, has been prized since the Renaissance as a treasure trove of otherwise unattested lore. Cast in the form of a dialogue it treats diverse topics while showcasing Virgil as master of all human knowledge, from diction to religion.

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Gilbert Walking Bull and Sally Moore

Gilbert Walking Bull tells the story of a gift of thunder eggs and how his dog, Gimo, set them free. The resulting book is an expression of the belief that all things in creation are sacred.

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Dong Daxi bian

The Prophet is a book of 26 poetic essays written in English in 1923 by the Lebanese-American artist, philosopher and writer Khalil Gibran. In the book, the prophet Almustafa who has lived in the foreign city of Orphalese for 12 years is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses many issues of life and the human condition. The book is divided into chapters dealing with love, marriage, children, giving, eating and drinking, work, joy and sorrow, houses, clothes, buying and selling, crime and punishment, laws, freedom, reason and passion, pain, self-knowledge, teaching, friendship, talking, time, good and evil, prayer, pleasure, beauty, religion, and death.