| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: [Enter GUIDO through the window.]
GUIDO
The wind is rising: how my ladder shook!
I thought that every gust would break the cords!
[Looks out at the city.]
Christ! What a night:
Great thunder in the heavens, and wild lightnings
Striking from pinnacle to pinnacle
Across the city, till the dim houses seem
To shudder and to shake as each new glare
Dashes adown the street.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from On Horsemanship by Xenophon: concluded his bargain to test whether the horse could do those
particular things;[3] what we are now maintaining is that the owner
ought to teach his own horse, and we will explain how this teaching is
to be done.
[2] Or, "treating of a topic already handled."
[3] i.e. possessed a certain ability at the date of purchase.
With a horse entirely ignorant of leaping, the best way is to take him
by the leading rein, which hangs loose, and to get across the trench
yourself first, and then to pull tight on the leading-rein, to induce
him to leap across. If he refuses, some one with a whip or switch
should apply it smartly. The result will be that the horse will clear
On Horsemanship |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: would rightly estimate them should place himself in thought at that time,
when the whole of Asia was subject to the third king of Persia. The first
king, Cyrus, by his valour freed the Persians, who were his countrymen, and
subjected the Medes, who were their lords, and he ruled over the rest of
Asia, as far as Egypt; and after him came his son, who ruled all the
accessible part of Egypt and Libya; the third king was Darius, who extended
the land boundaries of the empire to Scythia, and with his fleet held the
sea and the islands. None presumed to be his equal; the minds of all men
were enthralled by him--so many and mighty and warlike nations had the
power of Persia subdued. Now Darius had a quarrel against us and the
Eretrians, because, as he said, we had conspired against Sardis, and he
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