| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: and seemed to pronounce his fear and repentance
alike hypocritical.
``For what art thou cast down, mad Priest?''
said Richard; ``art thou afraid thy diocesan should
learn how truly thou dost serve Our Lady and
Saint Dunstan?---Tush, man! fear it not; Richard
of England betrays no secrets that pass over the flagon.''
``Nay, most gracious sovereign,'' answered the
Hermit, (well known to the curious in penny-histories
of Robin Hood, by the name of Friar Tuck,)
``it is not the crosier I fear, but the sceptre.---Alas!
Ivanhoe |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: morality, illustrated by the friendship of the two youths, and also by the
sayings of the poets ('who are our fathers in wisdom,' and yet only tell us
half the truth, and in this particular instance are not much improved upon
by the philosophers), to a more comprehensive notion of friendship. This,
however, is far from being cleared of its perplexity. Two notions appear
to be struggling or balancing in the mind of Socrates:--First, the sense
that friendship arises out of human needs and wants; Secondly, that the
higher form or ideal of friendship exists only for the sake of the good.
That friends are not necessarily either like or unlike, is also a truth
confirmed by experience. But the use of the terms 'like' or 'good' is too
strictly limited; Socrates has allowed himself to be carried away by a sort
Lysis |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: of beauty and the spirit of greatness, I should be exultantly
silent for ever; but I sing just as the birds do, and my songs
are as ephemeral." It is for this bird-like quality of song, it
seems to me, that they are to be valued. They hint, in a sort of
delicately evasive way, at a rare temperament, the temperament of
a woman of the East, finding expression through a Western
language and under partly Western influences. They do not
express the whole of that temperament; but they express, I think,
its essence; and there is an Eastern magic in them.
Sarojini Chattopadhyay was born at Hyderabad on February 13,
1879. Her father, Dr. Aghorenath Chattopadhyay, is descended
|
