| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: By violet-hooded Doctors, elegies
And quoted odes, and jewels five-words-long
That on the stretched forefinger of all Time
Sparkle for ever: then we dipt in all
That treats of whatsoever is, the state,
The total chronicles of man, the mind,
The morals, something of the frame, the rock,
The star, the bird, the fish, the shell, the flower,
Electric, chemic laws, and all the rest,
And whatsoever can be taught and known;
Till like three horses that have broken fence,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: ruffling his crest in solitary pride on the end of a dead branch,
darts down the stream at your approach, winding up his red angrily
as if he despised you for interrupting his fishing. And the cat-
bird, that sang so charmingly while she thought herself unobserved,
now tries to scare you away by screaming "snake, snake!"
As evening draws near, and the light beneath the trees grows
yellower, and the air is full of filmy insects out for their last
dance, the voice of the little river becomes louder and more
distinct. The true poets have often noticed this apparent increase
in the sound of flowing waters at nightfall. Gray, in one of his
letters, speaks of "hearing the murmur of many waters not audible
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dream Life and Real Life by Olive Schreiner: put them in the crevices between the rocks; and so the room was quite
furnished. Afterwards she went down to the river and brought her arms full
of willow, and made a lovely bed; and, because the weather was very hot,
she lay down to rest upon it.
She went to sleep soon, and slept long, for she was very weak. Late in the
afternoon she was awakened by a few cold drops falling on her face. She
sat up. A great and fierce thunderstorm had been raging, and a few of the
cool drops had fallen through the crevice in the rocks. She pushed the
asparagus branch aside, and looked out, with her little hands folded about
her knees. She heard the thunder rolling, and saw the red torrents rush
among the stones on their way to the river. She heard the roar of the
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