| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: As when the sweltering baker, at night, when the city is dead,
Alone in the trough of labour treads and fashions the bread;
So in the heat, and the reek, and the touch of woman and man,
The naked spirit of evil kneaded the hearts of the clan.
Now cold was at many a heart, and shaking in many a seat;
For there were the empty baskets, but who was to furnish the meat?
For here was the nation assembled, and there were the ovens anigh,
And out of a thousand singers nine were numbered to die.
Till, of a sudden, a shock, a mace in the air, a yell,
And, struck in the edge of the crowd, the first of the victims fell. (8)
Terror and horrible glee divided the shrinking clan,
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dracula by Bram Stoker: and when I had seen him he was either in the fasting stage of his
existence in his rooms or, when he was bloated with fresh blood,
in a ruined building open to the air, but here the place was small
and close, and the long disuse had made the air stagnant and foul.
There was an earthy smell, as of some dry miasma, which came through
the fouler air. But as to the odor itself, how shall I describe it?
It was not alone that it was composed of all the ills of mortality and
with the pungent, acrid smell of blood, but it seemed as though corruption
had become itself corrupt. Faugh! It sickens me to think of it.
Every breath exhaled by that monster seemed to have clung to the place
and intensified its loathsomeness.
Dracula |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: catechism, the impertinence, which were inexhaustible on such
occasions, to the discomfiture of the neophyte, whose manners,
strength, and temper were thus tested. Lambert, whether he was stoical
or dumfounded, made no reply to any questions. One of us thereupon
remarked that he was no doubt of the school of Pythagoras, and there
was a shout of laughter. The new boy was thenceforth Pythagoras
through all his life at the college. At the same time, Lambert's
piercing eye, the scorn expressed in his face for our childishness, so
far removed from the stamp of his own nature, the easy attitude he
assumed, and his evident strength in proportion to his years, infused
a certain respect into the veriest scamps among us. For my part, I
Louis Lambert |
