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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: His lips were blackened with fever, his cheeks were whiter than chalk;
Fever clutched at his hands, fever nodded his head,
But, quiet and steady and cruel, his eyes shone ruby-red.
In the earliest rays of the sun the chief rose up content;
Braves were summoned, and drummers; messengers came and went;
Braves ran to their lodges, weapons were snatched from the wall;
The commons herded together, and fear was over them all.
Festival dresses they wore, but the tongue was dry in their mouth,
And the blinking eyes in their faces skirted from north to south.
Now to the sacred enclosure gathered the greatest and least,
And from under the shade of the banyan arose the voice of the feast,
Ballads |
