| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: other kind of verse: for not by art does the poet sing, but by power
divine. Had he learned by rules of art, he would have known how to speak
not of one theme only, but of all; and therefore God takes away the minds
of poets, and uses them as his ministers, as he also uses diviners and holy
prophets, in order that we who hear them may know them to be speaking not
of themselves who utter these priceless words in a state of
unconsciousness, but that God himself is the speaker, and that through them
he is conversing with us. And Tynnichus the Chalcidian affords a striking
instance of what I am saying: he wrote nothing that any one would care to
remember but the famous paean which is in every one's mouth, one of the
finest poems ever written, simply an invention of the Muses, as he himself
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: him for Holmes. The next day it was to be signed. Holmes saw
him at last lumbering across the prairie, wiping the perspiration
from his forehead. Summer or winter, he contrived to be always
hot. There was a cart drawn by an old donkey coming along beside
him. Knowles was talking to the driver. The old man clapped his
hands as stage-coachmen do, and drew in long draughts of air, as
if there were keen life and promise in every breath. They came
up at last, the cart empty, and drying for the day's work after
its morning's scrubbing, Lois's pock-marked face all in a glow
with trying to keep Barney awake. She grew quite red with
pleasure at seeing Holmes, but went on quickly as the men began
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Betty Zane by Zane Grey: called the greatest Indian slayer known to men.
When Lewis was about twenty years old, and his brothers John and Martin little
older, they left their Virginia home for a protracted hunt. On their return
they found the smoking ruins of the home, the mangled remains of father and
mother, the naked and violated bodies of their sisters, and the scalped and
bleeding corpse of a baby brother.
Lewis Wetzel swore sleepless and eternal vengeance on the whole Indian race.
Terribly did he carry out that resolution. From that time forward he lived
most of the time in the woods, and an Indian who crossed his trail was a
doomed man. The various Indian tribes gave him different names. The Shawnees
called him "Long Knife;" the Hurons, "Destroyer;" the Delawares, "Death Wind,"
Betty Zane |
