| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: And out of the cloud that smites, beneficent rivers of rain.
Vailima.
XL - AN END OF TRAVEL
LET now your soul in this substantial world
Some anchor strike. Be here the body moored; -
This spectacle immutably from now
The picture in your eye; and when time strikes,
And the green scene goes on the instant blind -
The ultimate helpers, where your horse to-day
Conveyed you dreaming, bear your body dead.
Vailima
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Which yet comes rolling back from off the top,
And headlong makes for levels of the plain.
Then to be always feeding an ingrate mind,
Filling with good things, satisfying never-
As do the seasons of the year for us,
When they return and bring their progenies
And varied charms, and we are never filled
With the fruits of life- O this, I fancy, 'tis
To pour, like those young virgins in the tale,
Waters into a sieve, unfilled forever.
. . . . . .
Of The Nature of Things |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: yesterday by a wise man, Prodicus of Ceos; but the audience thought that he
was talking mere nonsense, and no one could be persuaded that he was
speaking the truth. And when at last a certain talkative young gentleman
came in, and, taking his seat, began to laugh and jeer at Prodicus,
tormenting him and demanding an explanation of his argument, he gained the
ear of the audience far more than Prodicus.
Can you repeat the discourse to us? Said Erasistratus.
SOCRATES: If I can only remember it, I will. The youth began by asking
Prodicus, In what way did he think that riches were a good and in what an
evil? Prodicus answered, as you did just now, that they were a good to
good men and to those who knew in what way they should be employed, while
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