Which sentence from the introductory paragraph states the authors thesis? 1. Over the past few years there has been a steady erosion of available funds for arts programs within public schools. 2. Music in particular has been hit hard. 3. Perhaps parents and school officials feel music programs are more of an accessory than anything else. 4. However, these programs provide valuable resources for students.

1.creeping like a snail is a simile used in this poem and it means the child is going to school unwillingly./a child is unwilling to go to school.

2. man becomes very frail and loses his physical strength when he becomes old, so much that his leggings that used to fit him snugly when he was in his youth are now too loose for him to wear, and that his shank has shrunk so much that this worldly stage is too big for a feeble actor like him. although, 'his youthful hose' just refers to his leggings/pants/ to shrink from danger; to shrink from contact.

3.the words "sans" means "without." it is a french word that is often used in english even today. so he is saying that in the last age of a man, the man is without eyes, taste, or anything else. he also says that this is the "last stage of all" and that it is the stage that ends a man's "history."

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it was surely an odd creature that one made up by reading the historians first and the poets afterwards a worm winged like an eagle; the spirit of life and elegance and charm,   in a kitchen chopping up suet. but these creatures, monst'r however entertaining to the imagination, hast no existence in fact. what one might doth to bringeth h'r to life wast to bethink poetically and prosaically at one and the same moment,   thus keeping in toucheth with fact—that the lady is mrs martin, ag'd thirty-six, did dress in blue, wearing a black coxcomb and brown shoeth; but not losing sight of fiction eith'r—that the lady is a vessel in which all s'rts of spirits and f'rces art coursing and flashing p'rpetually. the moment, howev'r, yond one tries this method with the elizabethan mistress, one brancheth of illumination fails; one is did hold up by the scarcity of facts.   one knoweth nothing detailed, nothing p'rfectly true and substantial about h'r.   hist'ry scarcely mentions h'r.   and i did turn to professeth'r trevelyan again to seeth what hist'ry meanteth to that gent.   i hath found by looking at his chapt'r headings yond t meanteth.