Method is more important than strength, when you wish to control your enemies. By dropping golden beads near a snake, a crow once managed To have a passer-by kill the snake for the beads.
Then, at the last and only couplet fraught With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, A needless Alexandrine ends the song, That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Every time some new huckster of angst-ridden metaphor is appointed by Art Forum, the congregation genuflects, stroking the catalog like a handful of Rosary beads, and starts spreading that old gospel according to Hyperbole. No questions asked... And thus the bill of goods is sold, all along the line. An art historical snake, swallowing its own tale.
The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda-these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs.