| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: not follow that the treatment is decent or improving, whether
for themselves or others. To treat all subjects in the
highest, the most honourable, and the pluckiest spirit,
consistent with the fact, is the first duty of a writer. If
he be well paid, as I am glad to hear he is, this duty
becomes the more urgent, the neglect of it the more
disgraceful. And perhaps there is no subject on which a man
should speak so gravely as that industry, whatever it may be,
which is the occupation or delight of his life; which is his
tool to earn or serve with; and which, if it be unworthy,
stamps himself as a mere incubus of dumb and greedy bowels on
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Among the willows, 'neath the limber vine,
Reclining would my love have lain with me,
Phyllis plucked garlands, or Amyntas sung.
Here are cool springs, soft mead and grove, Lycoris;
Here might our lives with time have worn away.
But me mad love of the stern war-god holds
Armed amid weapons and opposing foes.
Whilst thou- Ah! might I but believe it not!-
Alone without me, and from home afar,
Look'st upon Alpine snows and frozen Rhine.
Ah! may the frost not hurt thee, may the sharp
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: too, outside the circle of light, into the darkness
that stood in front of me like a wall. In one stride
I penetrated it. Such must have been the dark-
ness before creation. It had closed behind me. I
knew I was invisible to the man at the helm.
Neither could I see anything. He was alone, I was
alone, every man was alone where he stood. And
every form was gone, too, spar, sail, fittings, rails;
everything was blotted out in the dreadful smooth-
ness of that absolute night.
A flash of lightning would have been a relief--I
The Shadow Line |
