| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Cherub, and Seraph, Potentates, and Thrones,
And Virtues, winged Spirits, and chariots winged
From the armoury of God; where stand of old
Myriads, between two brazen mountains lodged
Against a solemn day, harnessed at hand,
Celestial equipage; and now came forth
Spontaneous, for within them Spirit lived,
Attendant on their Lord: Heaven opened wide
Her ever-during gates, harmonious sound
On golden hinges moving, to let forth
The King of Glory, in his powerful Word
Paradise Lost |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: MY DEAR HENRY JAMES, - Thanks for yours; your former letter was
lost; so it appears was my long and masterly treatise on the TRAGIC
MUSE. I remember sending it very well, and there went by the same
mail a long and masterly tractate to Gosse about his daddy's life,
for which I have been long expecting an acknowledgment, and which
is plainly gone to the bottom with the other. If you see Gosse,
please mention it. These gems of criticism are now lost
literature, like the tomes of Alexandria. I could not do 'em
again. And I must ask you to be content with a dull head, a weary
hand, and short commons, for to-day, as I am physically tired with
hard work of every kind, the labours of the planter and the author
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: case more trying by far to the nerves is to discover some
mysterious companionship when intuition, sensation, memory,
analogy, testimony, probability, induction -- every kind of
evidence in the logician's list -- have united to persuade con-
sciousness that it is quite in isolation.
Farmer Oak went towards the plantation and pushed
through its lower boughs to the windy side. A dim mass under
the slope reminded him that a shed occupied a place here,
the site being a cutting into the slope of the hill, so that at
its back part the roof was almost level with the ground. In
front it was formed of board nailed to posts and covered with
Far From the Madding Crowd |
