| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: And filled the bottle up with water.'
'Well, and the mother?' Robin cried.
'O she!' said Ben - 'I think she died.'
'Battle and blood, death and disease,
Upon the tainted Tropic seas -
The attendant sharks that chew the cud -
The abhorred scuppers spouting blood -
The untended dead, the Tropic sun -
The thunder of the murderous gun -
The cut-throat crew - the Captain's curse -
The tempest blustering worse and worse -
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by T. S. Eliot: She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What's not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what's thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: SOCRATES: And he who is a good general is also a good rhapsode?
ION: No; I do not say that.
SOCRATES: But you do say that he who is a good rhapsode is also a good
general.
ION: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And you are the best of Hellenic rhapsodes?
ION: Far the best, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And are you the best general, Ion?
ION: To be sure, Socrates; and Homer was my master.
SOCRATES: But then, Ion, what in the name of goodness can be the reason
why you, who are the best of generals as well as the best of rhapsodes in
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