| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: WHETHER upon the garden seat
You lounge with your uplifted feet
Under the May's whole Heaven of blue;
Or whether on the sofa you,
No grown up person being by,
Do some soft corner occupy;
Take you this volume in your hands
And enter into other lands,
For lo! (as children feign) suppose
You, hunting in the garden rows,
Or in the lumbered attic, or
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli: which could be made the head of this redemption. This will not be
difficult if you will recall to yourself the actions and lives of the
men I have named. And although they were great and wonderful men, yet
they were men, and each one of them had no more opportunity than the
present offers, for their enterprises were neither more just nor
easier than this, nor was God more their friend than He is yours.
[*] Giuliano de Medici. He had just been created a cardinal by Leo X.
In 1523 Giuliano was elected Pope, and took the title of Clement
VII.
With us there is great justice, because that war is just which is
necessary, and arms are hallowed when there is no other hope but in
The Prince |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: them old, and the almanack-maker has the liberty of chusing the
sickliest season of the year where he may fix his prediction.
Again, "This month an eminent clergyman will be preferr'd;" of
which there may be some hundreds half of them with one foot in
the grave. Then "such a planet in such a house shews great
machinations, plots and conspiracies, that may in time be brought
to light:" After which, if we hear of any discovery, the
astrologer gets the honour; if not, his prediction still stands
good. And at last, "God preserve King William from all his open
and secret enemies, Amen." When if the King should happen to have
died, the astrologer plainly foretold it; otherwise it passes but
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