Margaret’s Song

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  There was a king in Thule,  True even to the grave;  To whom his dying mistress  A golden beaker gave.  At every feast he drained it,  Naught was to him so dear,  And often as he drained it,  Gush’d from his eyes the tear.  When death came, unrepining  His cities o’er he told;  All to his heir resigning,  Except his cup of gold.  With many a knightly vassal  At a royal feast sat he,  In yon proud hall ancestral,  In his castle o’er the sea.  Up stood the jovial monarch,  And quaff’d his last life’s glow,  Then hurled the hallow’d goblet  Into the flood below.  He saw it splashing, drinking,  And plunging in the sea;  His eyes meanwhile were sinking,  And never again drank he. “Margaret’s Song” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) in “Faust. Part I.”

The Beautiful You

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"You are not your body and hair style but your capacity for choosing well. If your choices are beautiful, so too will you be." (Epictetus, Discourses 3.1.39b-40)

Another translation reads, "for you are not flesh and hair, but you are will; and if your will beautiful, then you will be beautiful."

 Or as one person put it, "you are more than a selfie" when you chose wisely.

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