| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: a fine model of the old school, gave substance and richness to the
rather too decorative quality, as a painter might call it, of the rest
of the room. On either side of a large window, two etageres displayed
a hundred precious trifles, flowers of mechanical art brought into
bloom by the fire of thought. On a chimney-piece of slate-blue marble
were figures in old Dresden, shepherds in bridal garb, with delicate
bouquets in their hands, German fantasticalities surrounding a
platinum clock, inlaid with arabesques. Above it sparkled the
brilliant facets of a Venice mirror framed in ebony, with figures
carved in relief, evidently obtained from some former royal residence.
Two jardinieres were filled with the exotic product of a hot-house,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: be to the loss of the other. They may live apart and have little
intercourse, but when they meet, the old tie is as strong as ever--
according to the common saying, they find one another always the same. The
greatest good of friendship is not daily intercourse, for circumstances
rarely admit of this; but on the great occasions of life, when the advice
of a friend is needed, then the word spoken in season about conduct, about
health, about marriage, about business,--the letter written from a distance
by a disinterested person who sees with clearer eyes may be of inestimable
value. When the heart is failing and despair is setting in, then to hear
the voice or grasp the hand of a friend, in a shipwreck, in a defeat, in
some other failure or misfortune, may restore the necessary courage and
Lysis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: The weeping virgin, trembling kneels before the risen sun.
Till we arise link'd in a golden band and never part:
But walk united bearing food to all our tender flowers.
Dost thou O little cloud? I fear that I am not like thee:
For I walk through the vales of Har, and smell the sweetest flowers:
But I feed not the little flowers: I hear the warbling birds,
But I feed not the warbling birds, they fly and seek their food:
But Thel delights in these no more because I fade away
And all shall say, without a use this shining women liv'd,
Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms.
The Cloud reclind upon his airy throne and answerd thus.
Poems of William Blake |
