| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: shoot the best shaft in Nottinghamshire. "Now," quoth Robin,
"will I go too, for fain would I draw a string for the bright
eyes of my lass and a butt of good October brewing."
So up he got and took his good stout yew bow and a score or more
of broad clothyard arrows, and started off from Locksley Town
through Sherwood Forest to Nottingham.
It was at the dawn of day in the merry Maytime, when hedgerows are green
and flowers bedeck the meadows; daisies pied and yellow cuckoo buds
and fair primroses all along the briery hedges; when apple buds blossom
and sweet birds sing, the lark at dawn of day, the throstle cock and cuckoo;
when lads and lasses look upon each other with sweet thoughts; when busy
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: the raw material for play. Not Theophile Gautier, not
Flaubert, can look more callously upon life, or rate the
reproduction more highly over the reality; and they will
parody an execution, a deathbed, or the funeral of the young
man of Nain, with all the cheerfulness in the world.
The true parallel for play is not to be found, of course,
in conscious art, which, though it be derived from play, is
itself an abstract, impersonal thing, and depends largely upon
philosophical interests beyond the scope of childhood. It is
when we make castles in the air and personate the leading
character in our own romances, that we return to the spirit of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Last War: A World Set Free by H. G. Wells: that the crippled beggar was, as it were, an essential feature of
the human spectacle, was becoming a strange thing in the world.
It had a curious effect upon Karenin's colleagues; their feeling
towards him was mingled with pity and a sense of inhumanity that
it needed usage rather than reason to overcome. He had a strong
face, with little bright brown eyes rather deeply sunken and a
large resolute thin-lipped mouth. His skin was very yellow and
wrinkled, and his hair iron gray. He was at all times an
impatient and sometimes an angry man, but this was forgiven him
because of the hot wire of suffering that was manifestly thrust
through his being. At the end of his life his personal prestige
The Last War: A World Set Free |
