| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: Here the imitation, as far as it went, was of course accidental.
In the following case the imitation was self-conscious. In the
year 1879, just after I had left Oxford, I met at a reception at
the house of one of the Foreign Ministers a woman of very curious
exotic beauty. We became great friends, and were constantly
together. And yet what interested me most in her was not her
beauty, but her character, her entire vagueness of character. She
seemed to have no personality at all, but simply the possibility of
many types. Sometimes she would give herself up entirely to art,
turn her drawing-room into a studio, and spend two or three days a
week at picture galleries or museums. Then she would take to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley: foul), but leave the sea-anemones and the crabs to clear away
everything, till the good tidy sea has covered up all the dirt in
soft mud and clean sand, where the water-babies can plant live
cockles and whelks and razor-shells and sea-cucumbers and golden-
combs, and make a pretty live garden again, after man's dirt is
cleared away. And that, I suppose, is the reason why there are no
water-babies at any watering-place which I have ever seen.
And where is the home of the water-babies? In St. Brandan's fairy
isle.
Did you never hear of the blessed St. Brandan, how he preached to
the wild Irish on the wild, wild Kerry coast, he and five other
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Paradise Lost by John Milton: Stream, and perpetual draw their humid train.
The dry land, Earth; and the great receptacle
Of congregated waters, he called Seas:
And saw that it was good; and said, Let the Earth
Put forth the verdant grass, herb yielding seed,
And fruit-tree yielding fruit after her kind,
Whose seed is in herself upon the Earth.
He scarce had said, when the bare Earth, till then
Desart and bare, unsightly, unadorned,
Brought forth the tender grass, whose verdure clad
Her universal face with pleasant green;
Paradise Lost |
