| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: recognize no superiority except in the reputation of virtue and wisdom.
And so their and our fathers, and these, too, our brethren, being nobly
born and having been brought up in all freedom, did both in their public
and private capacity many noble deeds famous over the whole world. They
were the deeds of men who thought that they ought to fight both against
Hellenes for the sake of Hellenes on behalf of freedom, and against
barbarians in the common interest of Hellas. Time would fail me to tell of
their defence of their country against the invasion of Eumolpus and the
Amazons, or of their defence of the Argives against the Cadmeians, or of
the Heracleids against the Argives; besides, the poets have already
declared in song to all mankind their glory, and therefore any
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: They played a buzzing melody, and you smiled.
To-morrow--what? And what of yesterday?
Through soundless labyrinths of dream you pass,
Through many doors to the one door of all.
Soon as it's opened we shall hear a music:
Or see a skeleton fall . . .
We walk with you. Where is it that you lead us?
We climb the muffled stairs beneath high lanterns.
We descend again. We grope through darkened cells.
You say: this darkness, here, will slowly kill me.
It creeps and weighs upon me . . . Is full of bells.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: ``To my thinking now,'' said the Jester, who
was frequently wont to act as peace-maker in the
family, ``our master did not propose to hurt Fangs,
but only to affright him. For, if you observed, he
rose in his stirrups, as thereby meaning to overcast
the mark; and so he would have done, but Fangs
happening to bound up at the very moment, received
a scratch, which I will be bound to heal with
a penny's breadth of tar.''
``If I thought so,'' said Gurth---``if I could but
think so---but no---I saw the javelin was well aimed---
Ivanhoe |
