| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: XXXVII
"`I will her keep, defend, save and protect,
I made the waters mild, the tigress tame,
O wretch that heavenly warnings dost reject!'
The warrior vanished having said the same.
I rose and journeyed on my way direct
When blushing morn from Tithon's bed forth came,
But for my faith is true and sure I ween,
And dreams are false, you still unchristened been.
XXXVIII
"A Pagan therefore thee I fostered have,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: to contain within its depths all the shapes that had ever been
reflected there,--the old Colonel himself, and his many descendants,
some in the garb of antique babyhood, and others in the bloom of
feminine beauty or manly prime, or saddened with the wrinkles of
frosty age. Had we the secret of that mirror, we would gladly sit
down before it, and transfer its revelations to our page. But there
was a story, for which it is difficult to conceive any foundation,
that the posterity of Matthew Maule had some connection with the
mystery of the looking-glass, and that, by what appears to have
been a sort of mesmeric process, they could make its inner region
all alive with the departed Pyncheons; not as they had shown themselves
House of Seven Gables |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: animals, holding our souls by the rudder of persuasion according to their
own pleasure;--thus did they guide all mortal creatures. Now different
gods had their allotments in different places which they set in order.
Hephaestus and Athene, who were brother and sister, and sprang from the
same father, having a common nature, and being united also in the love of
philosophy and art, both obtained as their common portion this land, which
was naturally adapted for wisdom and virtue; and there they implanted brave
children of the soil, and put into their minds the order of government;
their names are preserved, but their actions have disappeared by reason of
the destruction of those who received the tradition, and the lapse of ages.
For when there were any survivors, as I have already said, they were men
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