| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: For thus the woman hinders and resists
Her own conception, if too joyously
Herself she treats the Venus of the man
With haunches heaving, and with all her bosom
Now yielding like the billows of the sea-
Aye, from the ploughshare's even course and track
She throws the furrow, and from proper places
Deflects the spurt of seed. And courtesans
Are thuswise wont to move for their own ends,
To keep from pregnancy and lying in,
And all the while to render Venus more
Of The Nature of Things |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: We made Compiegne as the sun was going down: a fine profile of a
town above the river. Over the bridge, a regiment was parading to
the drum. People loitered on the quay, some fishing, some looking
idly at the stream. And as the two boats shot in along the water,
we could see them pointing them out and speaking one to another.
We landed at a floating lavatory, where the washer-women were still
beating the clothes.
AT COMPIEGNE
WE put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiegne, where nobody
observed our presence.
Reservery and general MILITARISMUS (as the Germans call it) were
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: By this time Pearl had reached the margin of the brook, and stood
on the further side, gazing silently at Hester and the clergyman,
who still sat together on the mossy tree-trunk waiting to receive
her. Just where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool
so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her
little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her
beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage, but
more refined and spiritualized than the reality. This image, so
nearly identical with the living Pearl, seemed to communicate
somewhat of its own shadowy and intangible quality to the child
herself. It was strange, the way in which Pearl stood, looking
The Scarlet Letter |
