| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: many bold and desperate achievements, that he retained it even
after his father's death, and is mentioned under it both in
authentic records and in tradition. Some of his feats are
recorded in the minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, and others are
mentioned in contemporary chronicles.
At the species of singular combat which we have described the
Laird's Jock was unrivalled, and no champion of Cumberland,
Westmoreland, or Northumberland could endure the sway of the huge
two-handed sword which he wielded, and which few others could
even lift. This "awful sword," as the common people term it, was
as dear to him as Durindana or Fushberta to their respective
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: As by its greater vanquished is the less.
Nor in that place had nature painted only,
But of the sweetness of a thousand odours
Made there a mingled fragrance and unknown.
"Salve Regina," on the green and flowers
There seated, singing, spirits I beheld,
Which were not visible outside the valley.
"Before the scanty sun now seeks his nest,"
Began the Mantuan who had led us thither,
"Among them do not wish me to conduct you.
Better from off this ledge the acts and faces
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: are enough champions of civilization: the minister and the school
committee and every one of you will take care of that.
I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life
who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks--who
had a genius, so to speak, for SAUNTERING, which word is
beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the
country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of
going a la Sainte Terre," to the Holy Land, till the children
exclaimed, "There goes a Sainte-Terrer," a Saunterer, a
Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks,
as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they
Walking |
