| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shore
Where neither piping bird nor peeping dawn
Disturbs the eternal sleep,
But in the stillness far withdrawn
Our dreamless rest for evermore we keep.
For as from open windows forth we peep
Upon the night-time star beset
And with dews for ever wet;
So from this garish life the spirit peers;
And lo! as a sleeping city death outspread,
Where breathe the sleepers evenly; and lo!
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: foundation in fact. But the chief point on which he lays stress as
evincing the 'uncritical way with which men receive legends, even
the legends of their own country,' is the entire baselessness of
the common Athenian tradition in which Harmodios and Aristogeiton
were represented as the patriotic liberators of Athens from the
Peisistratid tyranny. So far, he points out, from the love of
freedom being their motive, both of them were influenced by merely
personal considerations, Aristogeiton being jealous of Hipparchos'
attention to Harmodios, then a beautiful boy in the flower of Greek
loveliness, while the latter's indignation was aroused by an insult
offered to his sister by the prince.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: salary as the Emperor of China's physicians (it is a pity that all
do not), no cure, no pay.
So she took the poor professor in hand: and because he was not
content with things as they are, she filled his head with things as
they are not, to try if he would like them better; and because he
did not choose to believe in a water-baby when he saw it, she made
him believe in worse things than water-babies - in UNICORNS, FIRE-
DRAKES, MANTICORAS, BASILISKS, AMPHISBAENAS, GRIFFINS, PHOENIXES,
ROCS, ORCS, DOG-HEADED MEN, THREE-HEADED DOGS, THREE-BODIED
GERYONS, and other pleasant creatures, which folks think never
existed yet, and which folks hope never will exist, though they
|
