| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: all. Six hymns remain, and a few fragments of the elegies: but the
most famous elegy, on Berenice's hair, is preserved to us only in a
Latin paraphrase of Catullus. It is curious, as the earliest instance
we have of genuinely ungenuine Court poetry, and of the complimentary
lie which does not even pretend to be true; the flattery which will not
take the trouble to prevent your seeing that it is laughing in your
face.
Berenice the queen, on Ptolemy's departure to the wars, vows her
beautiful tresses to her favourite goddess, as the price of her
husband's safe return; and duly pays her vow. The hair is hung up in
the temple: in a day or two after it has vanished. Dire is the wrath
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Reason Discourse by Rene Descartes: it is composed, this should not prevent all its parts from tending exactly
to its center; how with water and air on its surface, the disposition of
the heavens and heavenly bodies, more especially of the moon, must cause a
flow and ebb, like in all its circumstances to that observed in our seas,
as also a certain current both of water and air from east to west, such as
is likewise observed between the tropics; how the mountains, seas,
fountains, and rivers might naturally be formed in it, and the metals
produced in the mines, and the plants grow in the fields and in general,
how all the bodies which are commonly denominated mixed or composite might
be generated and, among other things in the discoveries alluded to
inasmuch as besides the stars, I knew nothing except fire which produces
Reason Discourse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: happier earth. It speaks of the claims of truth and justice, and
assails untruth and injustice, for these are elemental principles of
social life; but it appeals more confidently to the warmer sympathy
which is linking the scattered children of the race, and it urges
all to co-operate in the restriction of suffering and the creation
of happiness. The advance guard of the race, the men and women in
whom mental alertness is associated with fine feeling, cry that they
have reached Pisgah's slope and in increasing numbers men and women
are pressing on to see if it be really the Promised Land."
"Pisgah--the Promised Land!" Mr. McCabe in that passage sounds as
if he were half-way to "Oh! Beulah Land!" and the tambourine.
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