| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Puck of Pook's Hill by Rudyard Kipling: otter-hunting, and he stayed on till the fox-hunting. I
gave him a bittern's claw to bring him good luck at
shooting. An imp, if ever there was!'
'And what happened to Gilbert?' said Dan.
'Not even a whipping. De Aquila said he would sooner
a clerk, however false, that knew the Manor-roll than a
fool, however true, that must be taught his work afresh.
Moreover, after that night I think Gilbert loved as much
as he feared De Aquila. At least he would not leave us -
not even when Vivian, the King's Clerk, would have
made him Sacristan of Battle Abbey. A false fellow, but,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: generation, handed down by grandames at the fireside, narrated night
and day, and the chronicle has changed its complexion somewhat in
every age. Like some great building that has suffered many
modifications of successive generations of architects, some sombre
weather-beaten pile, the delight of a poet, the story would drive the
commentator and the industrious winnower of words, facts, and dates to
despair. The narrator believes in it, as all superstitious minds in
Flanders likewise believe; and is not a whit wiser nor more credulous
than his audience. But as it would be impossible to make a harmony of
all the different renderings, here are the outlines of the story;
stripped, it may be, of its picturesque quaintness, but with all its
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: Filled with love's happy shame from other eyes,
RIVERS TO THE SEA
Dazzled with tenderness and drowned in light
As tho' you looked unthinking at the sun,
Oh Litis, that is joy! But if you came
Not from the sunny shallow pool of sleep,
But from the sea of death, the strangling sea
Of night and nothingness, and waked to find
Love looking down upon you, glad and still,
Strange and yet known forever, that is peace.
So did he lean above me. Not a word
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