| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: know why, but it was there. I gave him a little money and sent
him away, and I assure you that when he was gone I gasped for
breath. His presence seemed to chill one's blood."
"Isn't this all just a little fanciful, Villiers? I
suppose the poor fellow had made an imprudent marriage, and, in
plain English, gone to the bad."
"Well, listen to this." Villiers told Clarke the story
he had heard from Austin.
"You see," he concluded, "there can be but little doubt
that this Mr. Blank, whoever he was, died of sheer terror; he
saw something so awful, so terrible, that it cut short his life.
The Great God Pan |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: They bore Him gold and chrysoprase,
And gifts of precious wine.
The shepherds came from out the north,
Their coats were brown and old,
They brought Him little new-born lambs --
They had not any gold.
The wise-men came from out the east,
And they were wrapped in white;
The star that led them all the way
Did glorify the night.
The angels came from heaven high,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from God The Invisible King by H. G. Wells: the days of its strength, it shows for the embraces of its mate. We
are to be glutted by living to six score and ten. We are to rise
from the table at last as gladly as we sat down. We shall go to
death as unresistingly as tired children go to bed. Men are to have
a life far beyond the range of what is now considered their prime,
and their last period (won by scientific self-control) will be a
period of ripe wisdom (from seventy to eighty to a hundred and
twenty or thereabouts) and public service!
(But why, one asks, public service? Why not book-collecting or the
simple pleasure of reminiscence so dear to aged egotists?
Metchnikoff never faces that question. And again, what of the man
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