| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: of solitude became our lot. It was a complete and soundless
stagnation; for as we had the ship ready for sea to the smallest
detail, as the frost was hard and the days short, we were
absolutely idle--idle to the point of blushing with shame when
the thought struck us that all the time our salaries went on.
Young Cole was aggrieved because, as he said, we could not enjoy
any sort of fun in the evening after loafing like this all day;
even the banjo lost its charm since there was nothing to prevent
his strumming on it all the time between the meals. The good
Paramor--he was really a most excellent fellow--became unhappy as
far as was possible to his cheery nature, till one dreary day I
A Personal Record |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: Nay, every race on earth of men, and beasts,
And ocean-folk, and flocks, and painted birds,
Rush to the raging fire: love sways them all.
Never than then more fiercely o'er the plain
Prowls heedless of her whelps the lioness:
Nor monstrous bears such wide-spread havoc-doom
Deal through the forests; then the boar is fierce,
Most deadly then the tigress: then, alack!
Ill roaming is it on Libya's lonely plains.
Mark you what shivering thrills the horse's frame,
If but a waft the well-known gust conveys?
Georgics |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: He felt as strong, and light, and fresh, as if his veins had run
champagne; and gave, he did not know why, three skips out of the
water, a yard high, and head over heels, just as the salmon do when
they first touch the noble rich salt water, which, as some wise men
tell us, is the mother of all living things.
He did not care now for the tide being against him. The red buoy
was in sight, dancing in the open sea; and to the buoy he would go,
and to it he went. He passed great shoals of bass and mullet,
leaping and rushing in after the shrimps, but he never heeded them,
or they him; and once he passed a great black shining seal, who was
coming in after the mullet. The seal put his head and shoulders
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