| 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: sufficient to have justified the eulogium and the hopes of Dante.
See Mariana, 1. xiv. c. 14.
v. 119. Rarely.]
Full well can the wise poet of Florence
That hight Dante, speaken in this sentence
Lo! in such manner rime is Dantes tale.
Full selde upriseth by his branches smale
Prowesse of man for God of his goodnesse
Woll that we claim of him our gentlenesse:
For of our elders may we nothing claime
But temporal thing, that men may hurt and maime.
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 Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: THE BEEFEATER. _[recoiling]_ A ghost! Angels and ministers of grace
defend us!
THE MAN. Well said, Master Warder. With your leave I will set that
down in writing; for I have a very poor and unhappy brain for
remembrance. _[He takes out his tablets and writes]._ Methinks this
is a good scene, with you on your lonely watch, and I approaching like
a ghost in the moonlight. Stare not so amazedly at me; but mark what
I say. I keep tryst here to-night with a dark lady. She promised to
bribe the warder. I gave her the wherewithal: four tickets for the
Globe Theatre.
THE BEEFEATER. Plague on her! She gave me two only.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Ere she had yielded up her sweets, or known
The joy of passion, that dread mystery
Which not to know is not to live at all,
And yet to know is to be held in death's most deadly thrall.
But as it hapt the Queen of Cythere,
Who with Adonis all night long had lain
Within some shepherd's hut in Arcady,
On team of silver doves and gilded wain
Was journeying Paphos-ward, high up afar
From mortal ken between the mountains and the morning star,
And when low down she spied the hapless pair,
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