Definition of "discursively"

If then I seem to step somewhat too discursively from point to point of my topic, let me suggest that I do so in the hope of thus the better keeping unbroken that chain of graduated impression by which alone the intellect of Man can expect to encompass the grandeurs of which I speak, and, in their majestic totality, to comprehend them.

1848, Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka: A Prose Poem‎, New York: Putnam, page 103

There were certain things […] that pricked him to talk discursively and incautiously; but now he realized that he had only been talking like a character in a novel, and not a very good novel.

1934 October, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], “Chapter 8”, in Burmese Days, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, Publishers

We are dealing in the Iliad with a commanding vision of man, articulate in every detail, not with a tale of adventure automatically or discursively carried forward.

1962, George Steiner, “Homer and the Scholars”, in Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman, New York: Atheneum, published 1986, page 176

In that realm, which was discursively constructed and called the Orient, certain kinds of assertions could be made, all of them possessing the same powerful generality and cultural validity.

1978, Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage, published 2003, Chapter 2, part II, p. 148