| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: Thou Sun, who view'st at once the world below;
Thou Juno, guardian of the nuptial vow;
Thou Hecate hearken from thy dark abodes!
Ye Furies, fiends, and violated gods,
All pow'rs invok'd with Dido's dying breath,
Attend her curses and avenge her death!
If so the Fates ordain, Jove commands,
Th' ungrateful wretch should find the Latian lands,
Yet let a race untam'd, and haughty foes,
His peaceful entrance with dire arms oppose:
Oppress'd with numbers in th' unequal field,
Aeneid |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: But women are funny. I was afraid the maid would jump down and
clear out amongst the rocks, in which case we should have had to
dismount and catch her. But she didn't do that; she sat perfectly
still on her mule and shrieked. Just simply shrieked. Ultimately
we came to a curiously shaped rock at the end of a short wooded
valley. It was very still there and the sunshine was brilliant. I
said to Dona Rita: 'We will have to part in a few minutes. I
understand that my mission ends at this rock.' And she said: 'I
know this rock well. This is my country.'
"Then she thanked me for bringing her there and presently three
peasants appeared, waiting for us, two youths and one shaven old
The Arrow of Gold |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Symposium by Plato: him if he had been interrogated about them. Yet Plato was not a mystic,
nor in any degree affected by the Eastern influences which afterwards
overspread the Alexandrian world. He was not an enthusiast or a
sentimentalist, but one who aspired only to see reasoned truth, and whose
thoughts are clearly explained in his language. There is no foreign
element either of Egypt or of Asia to be found in his writings. And more
than any other Platonic work the Symposium is Greek both in style and
subject, having a beauty 'as of a statue,' while the companion Dialogue of
the Phaedrus is marked by a sort of Gothic irregularity. More too than in
any other of his Dialogues, Plato is emancipated from former philosophies.
The genius of Greek art seems to triumph over the traditions of
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