| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: From the far shore, thicke set with reedes and Sedges,
As patiently I was attending sport,
I heard a voyce, a shrill one, and attentive
I gave my eare, when I might well perceive
T'was one that sung, and by the smallnesse of it
A boy or woman. I then left my angle
To his owne skill, came neere, but yet perceivd not
Who made the sound, the rushes and the Reeds
Had so encompast it: I laide me downe
And listned to the words she sung, for then,
Through a small glade cut by the Fisher men,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: the extreme simplicity of these rudimentary relics. And once or twice
in a century--not oftener, there arises a Homer of music, to whom God
grants the gift of being ahead of his age; men who can compact
melodies full of accomplished facts, pregnant with mighty poetry.
Think of this; remember it. The thought, repeated by you, will prove
fruitful; it is melody, not harmony, that can survive the shocks of
time.
"The music of this oratorio contains a whole world of great and sacred
things. A work which begins with that introduction and ends with that
prayer is immortal--as immortal as the Easter hymn, /O filii et
filioe/, as the /Dies iroe/ of the dead, as all the songs which in
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Life in the Iron-Mills by Rebecca Davis: took notice of her. She watched them all--sitting on the end of
the pallet, holding his head in her arms with the ferocity of a
watch-dog, if any of them touched the body. There was no
meekness, no sorrow, in her face; the stuff out of which
murderers are made, instead. All the time Haley and the woman
were laying straight the limbs and cleaning the cell, Deborah
sat still, keenly watching the Quaker's face. Of all the crowd
there that day, this woman alone had not spoken to her,--only
once or twice had put some cordial to her lips. After they all
were gone, the woman, in the same still, gentle way, brought a
vase of wood-leaves and berries, and placed it by the pallet,
Life in the Iron-Mills |
