| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: Sweetly suppos'd them mistress of his heart.
My woeful self, that did in freedom stand,
And was my own fee-simple, (not in part,)
What with his heart in youth, and youth in art,
Threw my affections in his charmed power,
Reserv'd the stalk, and gave him all my flower.
'Yet did I not, as some my equals did,
Demand of him, nor being desired yielded;
Finding myself in honour so forbid,
With safest distance I mine honour shielded:
Experience for me many bulwarks builded
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Democracy In America, Volume 1 by Alexis de Toqueville: which is nowise alarmed by them, because the population of the
cities has hitherto exercised neither power nor influence over
the rural districts. Nevertheless, I look upon the size of
certain American cities, and especially on the nature of their
population, as a real danger which threatens the future security
of the democratic republics of the New World; and I venture to
predict that they will perish from this circumstance unless the
government succeeds in creating an armed force, which, whilst it
remains under the control of the majority of the nation, will be
independent of the town population, and able to repress its
excesses.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: command was given to break clear from it, such was the immovable
strain upon the timber-heads to which the fluke-chains and cables
were fastened, that it was impossible to cast them off. Meantime
everything in the Pequod was aslant. To cross to the other side of
the deck was like walking up the steep gabled roof of a house. The
ship groaned and gasped. Many of the ivory inlayings of her bulwarks
and cabins were started from their places, by the unnatural
dislocation. In vain handspikes and crows were brought to bear upon
the immovable fluke-chains, to pry them adrift from the timberheads;
and so low had the whale now settled that the submerged ends could
not be at all approached, while every moment whole tons of
Moby Dick |
