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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: purpose; my sphere of attention was suddenly magnified; no kind of
knowledge was to be overlooked. I ranged mountains and deserts for
images and resemblances, and pictured upon my mind every tree of
the forest and flower of the valley. I observed with equal care
the crags of the rock and the pinnacles of the palace. Sometimes I
wandered along the mazes of the rivulet, and sometimes watched the
changes of the summer clouds. To a poet nothing can be useless.
Whatever is beautiful and whatever is dreadful must be familiar to
his imagination; he must be conversant with all that is awfully
vast or elegantly little. The plants of the garden, the animals of
the wood, the minerals of the earth, and meteors of the sky, must
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