| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: Nor a bend of the head,
But only a hush of the heart
That has too much to keep,
Only memories waking
That sleep so light a sleep.
"My Heart Is Heavy"
My heart is heavy with many a song
Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree,
But I can never give you one --
My songs do not belong to me.
Yet in the evening, in the dusk
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Alcibiades I by Plato: in our own eyes?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Did you ever observe that the face of the person looking into
the eye of another is reflected as in a mirror; and in the visual organ
which is over against him, and which is called the pupil, there is a sort
of image of the person looking?
ALCIBIADES: That is quite true.
SOCRATES: Then the eye, looking at another eye, and at that in the eye
which is most perfect, and which is the instrument of vision, will there
see itself?
ALCIBIADES: That is evident.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: fact I was not at all certain that I wanted to write, or that I
meant to write, or that I had anything to write about. No, I was
not impatient. I lounged between the mantelpiece and the window,
not even consciously waiting for the table to be cleared. It was
ten to one that before my landlady's daughter was done I would
pick up a book and sit down with it all the morning in a spirit
of enjoyable indolence. I affirm it with assurance, and I don't
even know now what were the books then lying about the room.
Whatever they were they were not the works of great masters,
where the secret of clear thought and exact expression can be
found. Since the age of five I have been a great reader, as is
Some Reminiscences |
