| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: your limbs underneath are shrouded in night; and the voice of lamentation
bursts forth, and your cheeks are wet with tears. And the vestibule is
full, and the court is full, of ghosts descending into the darkness of
Erebus, and the sun has perished out of heaven, and an evil mist is spread
abroad (Od.).'
And there are many such passages in the Iliad also; as for example in the
description of the battle near the rampart, where he says:--
'As they were eager to pass the ditch, there came to them an omen: a
soaring eagle, holding back the people on the left, bore a huge bloody
dragon in his talons, still living and panting; nor had he yet resigned the
strife, for he bent back and smote the bird which carried him on the breast
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: She glanced at him, and it was suddenly apparent for one instant
of illumination that this ring upon her finger was the crowning
blunder of her life. It was apparent, and then it faded into the
quality of an inevitable necessity.
"Odd!" he remarked, rather surprisingly, after a little interval.
There was a brief pause, a crowded pause, between them.
She sat very still, and his eyes rested on that ornament for a
moment, and then travelled slowly to her wrist and the soft lines
of her forearm.
"I suppose I ought to congratulate you," he said. Their eyes met,
and his expressed perplexity and curiosity. "The fact is--I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: of the king, saving the child to look upon the sun which he had doomed
to darkness? Nay, I would fly, leaving all, and seek out some far
tribe where I might begin to live again. Here I could not live; here
in the shadow of Chaka was nothing but death.
I reached my own huts, there to find that my wife Macropha was
delivered of twins. I sent away all in the hut except my other wife,
Anadi, she who eight days gone had born me a son. The second of the
twins was born; it was a boy, born dead. The first was a girl, she who
lived to be Nada the Beautiful, Nada the Lily. Then a thought came
into my heart. Here was a path to run on.
"Give me the boy," I said to Anadi. "He is not dead. Give him to me
Nada the Lily |
