| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Each an isolated item in the family sacrifice.
There were creepers among catacombs where dull regrets were torches,
Giving light enough to show them what was there upon the shelves --
Where there was more for them to see than pleasure would remember
Of something that had been alive and once had been themselves.
There were some who stirred the ruins with a solid imprecation,
While as many fled repentance for the promise of despair:
There were drinkers of wrong waters in the Valley of the Shadow,
And all the sparkling ways were dust that once had led them there.
There were some who knew the steps of Age incredibly beside them,
And his fingers upon shoulders that had never felt the wheel;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: shook her head; but Harney took the cup and put his
lips to it. When he had set it down Charity saw him
feel in his pocket and draw out a dollar; he hesitated
a moment, and then put it back, and she guessed that he
did not wish her to see him offering money to people
she had spoken of as being her kin.
The sleeping man stirred, lifted his head and opened
his eyes. They rested vacantly for a moment on Charity
and Harney, and then closed again, and his head
drooped; but a look of anxiety came into the woman's
face. She glanced out of the window and then came
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: Year's Eve. But outside of the house the snow lay two feet deep on
the level, and shoulder-high in the drifts. The sky was at last
swept clean of clouds. The shivering stars and the shrunken moon
looked infinitely remote in the black vault of heaven. The frozen
lake, on which the ice was three feet thick and solid as rock, was
like a vast, smooth bed, covered with a white counterpane. The
cruel wind still poured out of the northwest, driving the dry snow
along with it like a mist of powdered diamonds.
Enveloped in this dazzling, pungent atmosphere, half blinded and
bewildered by it, buffeted and yet supported by the onrushing
torrent of air, a man on snow-shoes, with a light pack on his
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