| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Ovid. Met. l. xiii f. 2
Dante appears to have fallen into a strange anachronism. Virgil's
death did not happen till long after this period.
v. 42. Adders and cerastes.]
Vipereum crinem vittis innexa cruentis.
Virg. Aen. l. vi. 281.
--spinaque vagi torquente cerastae
. . . et torrida dipsas
Et gravis in geminum vergens eaput amphisbaena.
Lucan. Pharsal. l. ix. 719.
So Milton:
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . .
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . .
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: symbol. But certainly the fact mentioned above is curious,
and its importance is accentuated by the following
considerations.
In the Temple of Denderah in Egypt, and on the inside
of the dome, there is or WAS an elaborate circular representation
of the Northern hemisphere of the sky and the
Zodiac.[1] Here Virgo the constellation is represented, as
in our star-maps, by a woman with a spike of corn in her
hand (Spica). But on the margin close by there is an annotating
and explicatory figure--a figure of Isis with
the infant Horus in her arms, and quite resembling in style
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
