| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: translation are preferable to others, but in which he proves
nothing so forcibly as that the simplicity and grace, the
rapidity, dignity, and fire, of Homer are quite incommunicable,
save by the very words in which they first found expression. And
what is thus said of Homer will apply to Dante with perhaps even
greater force. With nearly all of Homer's grandeur and rapidity,
though not with nearly all his simplicity, the poem of Dante
manifests a peculiar intensity of subjective feeling which was
foreign to the age of Homer, as indeed to all pre-Christian
antiquity. But concerning this we need not dilate, as it has
often been duly remarked upon, and notably by Carlyle, in his
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: orders, whereby I was somewhat revived, ushered me to bed.
CHAPTER III
WHILE leading the way upstairs, she recommended that I should hide
the candle, and not make a noise; for her master had an odd notion
about the chamber she would put me in, and never let anybody lodge
there willingly. I asked the reason. She did not know, she
answered: she had only lived there a year or two; and they had so
many queer goings on, she could not begin to be curious.
Too stupefied to be curious myself, I fastened my door and glanced
round for the bed. The whole furniture consisted of a chair, a
clothes-press, and a large oak case, with squares cut out near the
Wuthering Heights |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: "too-populous wilderness," by going out to be alone a while with
God in heaven, and with that earth which He has given to the
children of men, not merely for the material wants of their bodies,
but as a witness and a sacrament that in Him they live and move,
and have their being, "not by bread alone, but by EVERY word that
proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
Thus I wrote some twenty years ago, when the study of Natural
History was confined mainly to several scientific men, or mere
collectors of shells, insects, and dried plants.
Since then, I am glad to say, it has become a popular and common
pursuit, owing, I doubt not, to the impulse given to it by the many
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