| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: launch. Before I had fairly landed in her stern-
sheets the slim little craft darted away from the
jetty with a sudden swirl of her propeller and the
hard, rapid puffing of the exhaust in her vaguely
gleaming brass funnel amidships.
The misty churning at her stern was the only
sound in the world. The shore lay plunged in the
silence of the deeper slumber. I watched the town
recede still and soundless in the hot night, till the
abrupt hail, "Steam-launch, ahoy!" made me spin
round face forward. We were close to a white
The Shadow Line |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: MAN SAILS THE DEEP AWHILE
MAN sails the deep awhile;
Loud runs the roaring tide;
The seas are wild and wide;
O'er many a salt, o'er many a desert mile,
The unchained breakers ride,
The quivering stars beguile.
Hope bears the sole command;
Hope, with unshaken eyes,
Sees flaw and storm arise;
Hope, the good steersman, with unwearying hand,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: slender threads, in an invisible film, in an incomprehen-
sible manner. It made its way into the cabin, into the
forecastle; it poisoned the sheltered places on the deck,
it could be sniffed as high as the mainyard. It was
clear that if the smoke came out the air came in. This
was disheartening. This combustion refused to be stifled.
"We resolved to try water, and took the hatches off.
Enormous volumes of smoke, whitish, yellowish, thick,
greasy, misty, choking, ascended as high as the trucks.
All hands cleared out aft. Then the poisonous cloud
blew away, and we went back to work in a smoke that
Youth |
