| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: the red light of orichalcum. The palaces in the interior of the citadel
were constructed on this wise:--In the centre was a holy temple dedicated
to Cleito and Poseidon, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by
an enclosure of gold; this was the spot where the family of the ten princes
first saw the light, and thither the people annually brought the fruits of
the earth in their season from all the ten portions, to be an offering to
each of the ten. Here was Poseidon's own temple which was a stadium in
length, and half a stadium in width, and of a proportionate height, having
a strange barbaric appearance. All the outside of the temple, with the
exception of the pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles
with gold. In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: aunt's lodger. That touched him extremely, and he thought
it simplified his situation until he found it did not.
I was as kind to her that evening as I knew how to be,
and I walked about the garden with her for half an hour.
There was no explanation of any sort between us; I did not ask
her why she had not answered my letter. Still less did I repeat
what I had said to her in that communication; if she chose to let
me suppose that she had forgotten the position in which Miss
Bordereau surprised me that night and the effect of the discovery
on the old woman I was quite willing to take it that way:
I was grateful to her for not treating me as if I had
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: In brief, the grounds and motives of her woe.
So slides he down upon his grained bat,
And comely-distant sits he by her side;
When he again desires her, being sat,
Her grievance with his hearing to divide:
If that from him there may be aught applied
Which may her suffering ecstasy assuage,
'Tis promised in the charity of age.
'Father,' she says, 'though in me you behold
The injury of many a blasting hour,
Let it not tell your judgement I am old;
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