| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: ever before. Thus on this night a festival was held in my honour,
and I must sit at the feast crowned with flowers and surrounded by
my wives, while those nobles who remained alive in the city did me
homage, and with them Cuitlahua, who, if Montezuma were dead, would
now be emperor. It was a dreary meal enough, for I could scarcely
be gay though I strove to drown my woes in drink, and as for the
guests, they had little jollity left in them. Hundreds of their
relatives were dead and with them thousands of the people; the
Spaniards still held their own in the fortress, and that day they
had seen their emperor, who to them was a god, smitten down by one
of their own number, and above all they felt that doom was upon
Montezuma's Daughter |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: Nor in my book can I take delight,
Nor sit in learning's bower,
Worn through with the dreary shower.
How can the bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?
How can a child, when fears annoy,
But droop his tender wing,
And forget his youthful spring!
O father and mother if buds are nipped,
And blossoms blown away;
And if the tender plants are stripped
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Anabasis by Xenophon: pupil of Socrates. He marched with the Spartans,
and was exiled from Athens. Sparta gave him land
and property in Scillus, where he lived for many
years before having to move once more, to settle
in Corinth. He died in 354 B.C.
The Anabasis is his story of the march to Persia
to aid Cyrus, who enlisted Greek help to try and
take the throne from Artaxerxes, and the ensuing
return of the Greeks, in which Xenophon played a
leading role. This occurred between 401 B.C. and
March 399 B.C.
Anabasis |
