| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: Enter Ghost againe.
But soft, behold: Loe, where it comes againe:
Ile crosse it, though it blast me. Stay Illusion:
If thou hast any sound, or vse of Voyce,
Speake to me. If there be any good thing to be done,
That may to thee do ease, and grace to me; speak to me.
If thou art priuy to thy Countries Fate
(Which happily foreknowing may auoyd) Oh speake.
Or, if thou hast vp-hoorded in thy life
Extorted Treasure in the wombe of Earth,
(For which, they say, you Spirits oft walke in death)
Hamlet |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: composite, earthy, and akin to mortality? And when some one breaks the
lyre, or cuts and rends the strings, then he who takes this view would
argue as you do, and on the same analogy, that the harmony survives and has
not perished--you cannot imagine, he would say, that the lyre without the
strings, and the broken strings themselves which are mortal remain, and yet
that the harmony, which is of heavenly and immortal nature and kindred, has
perished--perished before the mortal. The harmony must still be somewhere,
and the wood and strings will decay before anything can happen to that.
The thought, Socrates, must have occurred to your own mind that such is our
conception of the soul; and that when the body is in a manner strung and
held together by the elements of hot and cold, wet and dry, then the soul
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: Battle and blast had dimm'd and torn.
Each dint upon his batter'd shield
Was token of a foughten field;
And thus, beneath his lady's bower,
He sung as fell the twilight hour:---
2.
``Joy to the fair!---thy knight behold,
Return'd from yonder land of gold;
No wealth he brings, nor wealth can need,
Save his good arms and battle-steed
His spurs, to dash against a foe,
Ivanhoe |
