| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: not about Hesiod or the other poets? Does not Homer speak of the same
themes which all other poets handle? Is not war his great argument? and
does he not speak of human society and of intercourse of men, good and bad,
skilled and unskilled, and of the gods conversing with one another and with
mankind, and about what happens in heaven and in the world below, and the
generations of gods and heroes? Are not these the themes of which Homer
sings?
ION: Very true, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And do not the other poets sing of the same?
ION: Yes, Socrates; but not in the same way as Homer.
SOCRATES: What, in a worse way?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Outlaw of Torn by Edgar Rice Burroughs: With all England he knew the utter contempt in
which Henry held the terms of the Magna Charta
which he so often violated along with his kingly oath
to maintain it. But what all England did not know De
Vac had gleaned from scraps of conversation dropped
in the armory: that Henry was even now negotiating
with the leaders of foreign mercenaries, and with Louis
IX of France, for a sufficient force of knights and men-
at-arms to wage a relentless war upon his own barons
that he might effectively put a stop to all future inter-
ference by them with the royal prerogative of the Plan-
The Outlaw of Torn |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: "He tossed, moaned, and now and then muttered
a complaint. And she sat with the table between
her and the couch, watching every movement and
every sound, with the terror, the unreasonable ter-
ror, of that man she could not understand creeping
over her. She had drawn the wicker cradle close
to her feet. There was nothing in her now but the
maternal instinct and that unaccountable fear.
"Suddenly coming to himself, parched, he de-
manded a drink of water. She did not move. She
had not understood, though he may have thought
Amy Foster |
