| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: manner in which Ion is affected by his own recitations affords a lively
illustration of the power which, in the Republic, Socrates attributes to
dramatic performances over the mind of the performer. His allusion to his
embellishments of Homer, in which he declares himself to have surpassed
Metrodorus of Lampsacus and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, seems to show that,
like them, he belonged to the allegorical school of interpreters. The
circumstance that nothing more is known of him may be adduced in
confirmation of the argument that this truly Platonic little work is not a
forgery of later times.
ION
by
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: drive Mr. Jamieson was walking slowly, stooping now and then, as
if to examine the road. When I went back, Mr. Harton was
furtively wiping his eyes.
"The prodigal has come home, Miss Innes," he said. "How often
the sins of the fathers are visited on the children!" Which left
me pondering.
Before Mr. Harton left, he told me something of the Armstrong
family. Paul Armstrong, the father, had been married twice.
Arnold was a son by the first marriage. The second Mrs.
Armstrong had been a widow, with a child, a little girl. This
child, now perhaps twenty, was Louise Armstrong, having taken her
 The Circular Staircase |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: And the queen that we call to mind sleeps with the brave and the just;
Sleeps with the weary at length; but, honoured and ever fair,
Shines in the eye of the mind the crown of the silver hair.
Honolulu.
XXXIII - TO MY WIFE (A Fragment)
LONG must elapse ere you behold again
Green forest frame the entry of the lane -
The wild lane with the bramble and the brier,
The year-old cart-tracks perfect in the mire,
The wayside smoke, perchance, the dwarfish huts,
And ramblers' donkey drinking from the ruts: -
|