| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: the old-fashioned orders of creation, the supernatural personages
are invariably conceived as greater than man, for good or evil.
In the modern humanitarian order as adopted by Wagner, Man is the
highest. In The Rhine Gold, it is pretended that there are as yet
no men on the earth. There are dwarfs, giants, and gods. The
danger is that you will jump to the conclusion that the gods, at
least, are a higher order than the human order. On the contrary,
the world is waiting for Man to redeem it from the lame and
cramped government of the gods. Once grasp that; and the allegory
becomes simple enough. Really, of course, the dwarfs, giants, and
gods are dramatizations of the three main orders of men: to wit,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Lamentable Tragedy of Locrine and Mucedorus by William Shakespeare: Thrice happy they whose fortune was so good,
To end their lives, and with their lives their woes!
Thrice hapless I, whom fortune so withstood,
That cruelly she gave me to my foes!
Oh, soldiers, is there any misery,
To be compared to fortune's treachery.
LOCRINE.
Camber, this same should be the Scithian queen.
CAMBER.
So may we judge by her lamenting words.
LOCRINE.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: of the race's glory.
Archer knew that Madame Olenska lived in a square
near one of the avenues radiating from the Invalides;
and he had pictured the quarter as quiet and almost
obscure, forgetting the central splendour that lit it up.
Now, by some queer process of association, that golden
light became for him the pervading illumination in
which she lived. For nearly thirty years, her life--of
which he knew so strangely little--had been spent in
this rich atmosphere that he already felt to be too dense
and yet too stimulating for his lungs. He thought of the
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