| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: May struggle to the tomb unreconciled.
Whatever suns may rise or set
There may be nothing kinder for him here
Than shafts and agonies;
And under these
He may cry out and stay on horribly;
Or, seeing in death too small a thing to fear,
He may go forward like a stoic Roman
Where pangs and terrors in his pathway lie, --
Or, seizing the swift logic of a woman,
Curse God and die.
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: seal, a letter written on vellum notepaper.
He rushed away at once to lock himself in, and read and re-read /her/
letter:--
"You are punishing me very severely, monsieur, both for the
friendliness of my effort to spare you a rebuff, and for the
attraction which intellect always has for me. I put confidence in
the generosity of youth, and you have disappointed me. And yet, if
I did not speak unreservedly (which would have been perfectly
ridiculous), at any rate I spoke frankly of my position, so that
you might imagine that I was not to be touched by a young soul. My
distress is the keener for my interest in you. I am naturally
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Apology by Plato: another enemy of him, and of many others besides him.
Then I went to one man after another, being not unconscious of the enmity
which I provoked, and I lamented and feared this: but necessity was laid
upon me,--the word of God, I thought, ought to be considered first. And I
said to myself, Go I must to all who appear to know, and find out the
meaning of the oracle. And I swear to you, Athenians, by the dog I swear!
--for I must tell you the truth--the result of my mission was just this: I
found that the men most in repute were all but the most foolish; and that
others less esteemed were really wiser and better. I will tell you the
tale of my wanderings and of the 'Herculean' labours, as I may call them,
which I endured only to find at last the oracle irrefutable. After the
|
