| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: but divine and the work of God; and that the poets are only the
interpreters of the Gods by whom they are severally possessed. Was not
this the lesson which the God intended to teach when by the mouth of the
worst of poets he sang the best of songs? Am I not right, Ion?
ION: Yes, indeed, Socrates, I feel that you are; for your words touch my
soul, and I am persuaded that good poets by a divine inspiration interpret
the things of the Gods to us.
SOCRATES: And you rhapsodists are the interpreters of the poets?
ION: There again you are right.
SOCRATES: Then you are the interpreters of interpreters?
ION: Precisely.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: together with the remains of his prize-money to purchase stock,
and then himself solicited the young woman's father to consent
to her marriage with her lover. But the old man decidedly refused,
thinking himself bound in honour to my friend, who, when he found
the father inexorable, quitted his country, nor returned until he heard
that his former mistress was married according to her inclinations.
"What a noble fellow!" you will exclaim. He is so; but then he is
wholly uneducated: he is as silent as a Turk, and a kind of ignorant
carelessness attends him, which, while it renders his conduct the
more astonishing, detracts from the interest and sympathy which
otherwise he would command.
Frankenstein |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: honey splashed with port wine, snow white, vermilion, lemon, and
silver gray in wide washes. The sides did not fall sheer, but
were graven by time, and water, and air into monstrous heads of
kings, dead chiefs--men and women of the old time. So far below
that no sound of its strife could reach us, the Yellowstone River
ran a finger-wide strip of jade green.
The sunlight took those wondrous walls and gave fresh hues to
those that nature had already laid there.
Evening crept through the pines that shadowed us, but the full
glory of the day flamed in that canyon as we went out very
cautiously to a jutting piece of rock--blood-red or pink it
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