| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: hours, and with something of a thrill we try to guess their
business. But here the romance was double: first, this glad
passenger, lit internally with wine, who sent up his voice in music
through the night; and then I, on the other hand, buckled into my
sack, and smoking alone in the pine-woods between four and five
thousand feet towards the stars.
When I awoke again (Sunday, 29th September), many of the stars had
disappeared; only the stronger companions of the night still burned
visibly overhead; and away towards the east I saw a faint haze of
light upon the horizon, such as had been the Milky Way when I was
last awake. Day was at hand. I lit my lantern, and by its glow-
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: strain. It is an essentially tame and civilized literature,
reflecting Greece and Rome. Her wilderness is a green wood, her
wild man a Robin Hood. There is plenty of genial love of Nature,
but not so much of Nature herself. Her chronicles inform us when
her wild animals, but not when the wild man in her, became
extinct.
The science of Humboldt is one thing, poetry is another thing.
The poet today, notwithstanding all the discoveries of science,
and the accumulated learning of mankind, enjoys no advantage over
Homer.
Where is the literature which gives expression to Nature? He
Walking |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Call of the Wild by Jack London: again, now, running free in the open, the unpacked earth
underfoot, the wide sky overhead.
They stopped by a running stream to drink, and, stopping, Buck
remembered John Thornton. He sat down. The wolf started on
toward the place from where the call surely came, then returned to
him, sniffing noses and making actions as though to encourage him.
But Buck turned about and started slowly on the back track. For
the better part of an hour the wild brother ran by his side,
whining softly. Then he sat down, pointed his nose upward, and
howled. It was a mournful howl, and as Buck held steadily on his
way he heard it grow faint and fainter until it was lost in the
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