| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: affirm a man to be a good poet who injures himself by his poetry.
Assuredly not, he said; such a poet would be a fool. And this is the
reason why I take you into my counsels, Socrates, and I shall be glad of
any further advice which you may have to offer. Will you tell me by what
words or actions I may become endeared to my love?
That is not easy to determine, I said; but if you will bring your love to
me, and will let me talk with him, I may perhaps be able to show you how to
converse with him, instead of singing and reciting in the fashion of which
you are accused.
There will be no difficulty in bringing him, he replied; if you will only
go with Ctesippus into the Palaestra, and sit down and talk, I believe that
Lysis |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: to the Achaeans.
Deiphobus then came close up to Idomeneus to avenge Asius, and
took aim at him with a spear, but Idomeneus was on the look-out
and avoided it, for he was covered by the round shield he always
bore--a shield of oxhide and bronze with two arm-rods on the
inside. He crouched under cover of this, and the spear flew over
him, but the shield rang out as the spear grazed it, and the
weapon sped not in vain from the strong hand of Deiphobus, for it
struck Hypsenor son of Hippasus, shepherd of his people, in the
liver under the midriff, and his limbs failed beneath him.
Deiphobus vaunted over him and cried with a loud voice saying,
The Iliad |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain: It was a famous breeder of chills and fever in its day.
I remember one summer when everybody in town had this
disease at once. Many chimneys were shaken down, and all
the houses were so racked that the town had to be rebuilt.
The chasm or gorge between Lover's Leap and the hill west of it
is supposed by scientists to have been caused by glacial action.
This is a mistake.
There is an interesting cave a mile or two below Hannibal, among the bluffs.
I would have liked to revisit it, but had not time. In my time the person
who then owned it turned it into a mausoleum for his daughter, aged fourteen.
The body of this poor child was put into a copper cylinder filled with
|
