| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.
THE TIGER
Tiger, tiger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: his head, of which nobody has robbed him, appears weeping or panic-stricken
in the presence of more than twenty thousand friendly faces, when there is
no one despoiling or wronging him;--is he in his right mind or is he not?
ION: No indeed, Socrates, I must say that, strictly speaking, he is not in
his right mind.
SOCRATES: And are you aware that you produce similar effects on most of
the spectators?
ION: Only too well; for I look down upon them from the stage, and behold
the various emotions of pity, wonder, sternness, stamped upon their
countenances when I am speaking: and I am obliged to give my very best
attention to them; for if I make them cry I myself shall laugh, and if I
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: Street--shopkeepers coming to their doors, people
in the houses snatching up their hats to run out--
a stir at which he seemed strangely surprised at
first, and then scared; but his only answer to the
wondering questions was that startled and evasive,
"For the present."
That sensation had been forgotten, long ago;
and Captain Hagberd himself, if not forgotten,
had come to be disregarded--the penalty of daili-
ness--as the sun itself is disregarded unless it
makes its power felt heavily. Captain Hagberd's
To-morrow |
