| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: evening in the drawing-room as in the past. But suspense and fear
drummed in the dreamer's bosom. "She has not denounced me yet" -
so his thoughts ran - "when will she denounce me? Will it be to-
morrow?" And it was not to-morrow, nor the next day, nor the next;
and their life settled back on the old terms, only that she seemed
kinder than before, and that, as for him, the burthen of his
suspense and wonder grew daily more unbearable, so that he wasted
away like a man with a disease. Once, indeed, he broke all bounds
of decency, seized an occasion when she was abroad, ransacked her
room, and at last, hidden away among her jewels, found the damning
evidence. There he stood, holding this thing, which was his life,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: At fairest. Do you first, Damoetas, sing,
Then you, Menalcas, in alternate strain:
Alternate strains are to the Muses dear.
DAMOETAS
"From Jove the Muse began; Jove filleth all,
Makes the earth fruitful, for my songs hath care."
MENALCAS
"Me Phoebus loves; for Phoebus his own gifts,
Bays and sweet-blushing hyacinths, I keep."
DAMOETAS
"Gay Galatea throws an apple at me,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: dream it worth his while to inquire after its cause; nor did
he get up to look out of the narrow grated window, which
gave access to the light and to the noise of the world
without.
He was so absorbed in his never-ceasing pain that it had
almost become a habit with him. He felt with such delight
the bonds which connected his immortal being with his
perishable frame gradually loosening, that it seemed to him
as if his spirit, freed from the trammels of the body, were
hovering above it, like the expiring flame which rises from
the half-extinguished embers.
The Black Tulip |
