| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Reason, in itself confounded,
Saw division grow together;
To themselves yet either-neither,
Simple were so well compounded.
That it cried how true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none
If what parts can so remain.
Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supreme and stars of love;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Gobseck by Honore de Balzac: had happened. The mattress had been flung contemptuously down by the
bedside, and across it, face downwards, lay the body of the Count,
like one of the paper envelopes that strewed the carpet--he too was
nothing now but an envelope. There was something grotesquely horrible
in the attitude of the stiffening rigid limbs.
"The dying man must have hidden the counter-deed under his pillow to
keep it safe so long as life should last; and his wife must have
guessed his thought; indeed, it might be read plainly in his last
dying gesture, in the convulsive clutch of his claw-like hands. The
pillow had been flung to the floor at the foot of the bed; I could see
the print of her heel upon it. At her feet lay a paper with the
Gobseck |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: in the halls, nor thy good wife to gad about in the town of
Ithaca.'
So spake he, and Athene was mightily angered at heart, and
chid Odysseus in wrathful words: 'Odysseus, thou hast no
more steadfast might nor any prowess, as when for nine
whole years continually thou didst battle with the Trojans
for high born Helen, of the white arms, and many men thou
slewest in terrible warfare, and by thy device the
wide-wayed city of Priam was taken. How then, now that thou
art come to thy house and thine own possessions, dost thou
bewail thee and art of feeble courage to stand before the
The Odyssey |
