| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: centuries, had been a thing of phase and phase, like the ageing
and dying of a man, this, like his killing by railway or motor
car, was one swift, conclusive smashing and an end.
2
The early battles of the aerial war were no doubt determined by
attempts to realise the old naval maxim, to ascertain the
position of the enemy's fleet and to destroy it. There was first
the battle of the Bernese Oberland, in which the Italian and
French navigables in their flank raid upon the Franconian Park
were assailed by the Swiss experimental squadron, supported as
the day wore on by German airships, and then the encounter of the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: berries and water; the sea mocks their thirst and lets them die.
The mountains have a grand, stupid, lovable tranquillity; the sea
has a fascinating, treacherous intelligence. The mountains lie
about like huge ruminants, their broad backs awful to look upon,
but safe to handle. The sea smooths its silver scales until you
cannot see their joints, - but their shining is that of a snake's
belly, after all. - In deeper suggestiveness I find as great a
difference. The mountains dwarf mankind and foreshorten the
procession of its long generations. The sea drowns out humanity
and time; it has no sympathy with either; for it belongs to
eternity, and of that it sings its monotonous song forever and
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: His bosom, saying: "See now how I rend me;
How mutilated, see, is Mahomet;
In front of me doth Ali weeping go,
Cleft in the face from forelock unto chin;
And all the others whom thou here beholdest,
Disseminators of scandal and of schism
While living were, and therefore are cleft thus.
A devil is behind here, who doth cleave us
Thus cruelly, unto the falchion's edge
Putting again each one of all this ream,
When we have gone around the doleful road;
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
