| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: 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
by the neck, and he in pain let him fall from him to the ground into the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: He stopped the horses, and beckoned to her to withdraw
with him a few yards aside, which she did, wondering.
"You don't know me, ma'am, I suppose?" he said.
"I do not," said she. "Why, yes, I do! You are young
Venn--your father was a dairyman somewhere here?"
"Yes; and I knew your niece, Miss Tamsin, a little.
I have something bad to tell you."
"About her--no! She has just come home, I believe,
with her husband. They arranged to return this
afternoon--to the inn beyond here."
"She's not there."
Return of the Native |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: tangle. It is to be remembered that he came to engineering
while yet it was in the egg and without a library, and that he
saw the bounds of that profession widen daily. He saw iron
ships, steamers, and the locomotive engine, introduced. He
lived to travel from Glasgow to Edinburgh in the inside of a
forenoon, and to remember that he himself had `often been
twelve hours upon the journey, and his grand-father (Lillie)
two days'! The profession was still but in its second
generation, and had already broken down the barriers of time
and space. Who should set a limit to its future
encroachments? And hence, with a kind of sanguine pedantry,
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