Exemplar

 Listen, see, and understand my words; and write them deep in your heart: for what I shall tell you is that which many seek, but few find; and many know and do, but few comprehend; for many see me, but few recognize me. Listen now, and understand if you can, and you will learn all: I am Hen, or the worst and most ferocious Dragon, and I endure throughout time. I revive myself from death, and kill the death that killed me. I resuscitate the corpses that I created; and, living in death, kill myself: for which you should rejoice, since without me, and my life, you could not rejoice.
 I carry poison in my head, but the remedy is in my tail, which I bite in my fury. Whoever tries to sport with me dies by my penetrating gaze. Whoever bites me must first bite himself; if I bite him, death bites him in the head, unless he bites me first; for my bite is medicine for my bite. It is in the high mountains that I find my rest and repose, yet it is in the plains and valleys of the earth, and in the dunghills, that I reside; it is in the vaporous water that I am conceived, yet it is in the air and fire that I find my food. My sweat smells of the grave: he who does not understand this will learn nothing of me. Hear me: I am known to all people, races, and tribes, to the poor as well as to the rich; and they all call me worthless, and countless other names and epithets. But anyone who knew me well would call me precious indeed. I am a stranger in my own country, but known to all climates of the world.
 Whoever sees me, or has seen me, does not recognize me; and whoever neither sees nor knows me, seeks me. My father and my mother conceived me, but I first conceived them. I am parent and child; I am mother, father, and son; I am invisible when I fly, and impalpable when I flee through the air, but visible and palpable to the touch. Therefore recognize me, and kill me, and know that I cannot die by the sword, or other arms; but present me with a mirror, and my own reflection kills me. If you feed me in fire, so that first my members change shape; and then my body is purged of all fatal poison; and then you see my body, soul and spirit joined together; then you will prove superior to all. He who hears me, but does not understand, consumes his days in useless labors, and employs his time to no purpose.