| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: has not bent his studies that way, may be excused for thinking
so, when he sees in how wretched a manner that noble art is
treated by a few mean illiterate traders between us and the
stars; who import a yearly stock of nonsense, lyes, folly, and
impertinence, which they offer to the world as genuine from the
planets, tho' they descend from no greater a height than their
own brains.
I intend in a short time to publish a large and rational defence
of this art, and therefore shall say no more in its justification
at present, than that it hath been in all ages defended by many
learned men, and among the rest by Socrates himself, whom I look
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: and find there everything--hope and comfort, joy and sorrow! (She
embraces and gazes on him.) Tell me! Oh, tell me! It seems so strange--art
thou indeed Egmont! Count Egmont! The great Egmont, who makes so
much noise in the world, who figures in the newspapers, who is the
support and stay of the provinces?
Egmont. No, Clara, I am not he.
Clara. How?
Egmont. Seest thou, Clara? Let me sit down! (He seats himself, she kneels
on a footstool before him, rests her arms on his knees and looks up in his
face.) That Egmont is a morose, cold, unbending Egmont, obliged to be
upon his guard, to assume now this appearance and now that; harassed,
Egmont |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: But Thel delights in these no more because I fade away
And all shall say, without a use this shining women liv'd,
Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms.
The Cloud reclind upon his airy throne and answerd thus.
Then if thou art the food of worms, O virgin of the skies,
How great thy use, how great thy blessing, every thing that lives.
Lives not alone nor or itself: fear not and I will call,
The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice.
Come forth worm and the silent valley, to thy pensive queen.
The helpless worm arose and sat upon the Lillys leaf,
And the bright Cloud saild on, to find his partner in the vale.
Poems of William Blake |
