| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alcibiades II by Platonic Imitator: fever, or suffer from ophthalmia? Or do you believe that a man may labour
under some other disease, even although he has none of these complaints?
Surely, they are not the only maladies which exist?
ALCIBIADES: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: And is every kind of ophthalmia a disease?
ALCIBIADES: Yes.
SOCRATES: And every disease ophthalmia?
ALCIBIADES: Surely not. But I scarcely understand what I mean myself.
SOCRATES: Perhaps, if you give me your best attention, 'two of us' looking
together, we may find what we seek.
ALCIBIADES: I am attending, Socrates, to the best of my power.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Albert Savarus by Honore de Balzac: created by the famous Watteville, who in his active old age was
passionately attached to this magnificent spot.
Between two precipitous hills--little peaks with bare summits known as
the great and the little Rouxey--in the heart of a ravine where the
torrents from the heights, with the Dent de Vilard at their head, come
tumbling to join the lovely upper waters of the Doubs, Watteville had
a huge dam constructed, leaving two cuttings for the overflow. Above
this dam he made a beautiful lake, and below it two cascades; and
these, uniting a few yards below the falls, formed a lovely little
river to irrigate the barren, uncultivated valley, and these two hills
he enclosed in a ring fence, and built himself a retreat on the dam,
Albert Savarus |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: In what moonlight-tangled meshes of perfume,
Where the clustering keovas guard the squirrel's slumber,
Where the deep woods glimmer with the jasmine's bloom?
I'll feed thee, O beloved, on milk and wild red honey,
I'll bear thee in a basket of rushes, green and white,
To a palace-bower where golden-vested maidens
Thread with mellow laughter the petals of delight.
Whither dost thou loiter, by what murmuring hollows,
Where oleanders scatter their ambrosial fire?
Come, thou subtle bride of my mellifluous wooing,
Come, thou silver-breasted moonbeam of desire!
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