| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Than every beast beside, yet is not fill'd!
So bottomless thy maw! --Ye spheres of heaven!
To whom there are, as seems, who attribute
All change in mortal state, when is the day
Of his appearing, for whom fate reserves
To chase her hence? --With wary steps and slow
We pass'd; and I attentive to the shades,
Whom piteously I heard lament and wail;
And, 'midst the wailing, one before us heard
Cry out "O blessed Virgin!" as a dame
In the sharp pangs of childbed; and "How poor
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: He knows now at what height low enemies
May reach his heart, and high friends let him fall;
But what not even such as he may know
Bedevils him the worst: his lark may sing
At heaven's gate how he will, and for as long
As joy may listen; but ~he~ sees no gate,
Save one whereat the spent clay waits a little
Before the churchyard has it, and the worm.
Not long ago, late in an afternoon,
I came on him unseen down Lambeth way,
And on my life I was afear'd of him:
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Works of Samuel Johnson by Samuel Johnson: pleasure which men are able to give in conversation,
holds no stated proportion to their knowledge
or their virtue. Many find their way to the tables
and the parties of those who never consider them as
of the least importance in any other place; we have
all, at one time or other, been content to love those
whom we could not esteem, and been persuaded
to try the dangerous experiment of admitting him
for a companion, whom we knew to be too ignorant
for a counsellor, and too treacherous for a friend.
I question whether some abatement of character
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