| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: 'I will not think about bloody war until the son of warlike Priam,
illustrious Hector, comes to the tents and ships of the Myrmidons,
slaughtering the Argives, and burning the ships with fire; and about my
tent and dark ship, I suspect that Hector, although eager for the battle,
will nevertheless stay his hand.'
Now, do you really think, Hippias, that the son of Thetis, who had been the
pupil of the sage Cheiron, had such a bad memory, or would have carried the
art of lying to such an extent (when he had been assailing liars in the
most violent terms only the instant before) as to say to Odysseus that he
would sail away, and to Ajax that he would remain, and that he was not
rather practising upon the simplicity of Odysseus, whom he regarded as an
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: The all-pondering, all-contriving head,
Weary with all things, wearies of the years;
And our sad spirits turn toward the dead;
And the tired child, the body, longs for bed.
TO CHARLES BAXTER
ON THE DEATH OF THEIR COMMON FRIEND, MR. JOHN ADAM, CLERK OF COURT.
OUR Johnie's deid. The mair's the pity!
He's deid, an' deid o' Aqua-vitae.
O Embro', you're a shrunken city,
Noo Johnie's deid!
Tak hands, an' sing a burial ditty
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: did his heart growl with anger at the evil deeds that were being
done: but he beat his breast and said, "Heart, be still, you had
worse than this to bear on the day when the terrible Cyclops ate
your brave companions; yet you bore it in silence till your
cunning got you safe out of the cave, though you made sure of
being killed."
Thus he chided with his heart, and checked it into endurance,
but he tossed about as one who turns a paunch full of blood and
fat in front of a hot fire, doing it first on one side and then
on the other, that he may get it cooked as soon as possible,
even so did he turn himself about from side to side, thinking
The Odyssey |
