Areopagus Volume XXX

Seven short lessons every someday.

Welcome one and all to the thirtieth volume of the Areopagus, and the first of 2023. What better way to start the new year, a time of resolution and change, than with the rousing final lines of Lord Byron's 1816 poem Prometheus, a meditation on the power of the human spirit?

Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself—and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

Duly inspired, it's time to begin a new year of the Areopagus...