| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Burned like a worm, and perished; and nothing
Was left me then but a soul that mingled
Itself with hers, and swayed and shuddered
In fearful triumph. When I consider
That helpless love and the cursed folly
That wrecked my life for the sake of a woman
Who broke with a laugh the chains of her marriage
(Whatever the word may mean), I wonder
If all the woe was her sin, or whether
The chains themselves were enough to lead her
In love's despite to break them. . . . Sinners
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: to the lake. Here, barring the accident of an extraordinary flood,
the troubles were over. On the broad, placid bosom of the stream
the logs would float. A crew, following, would do the easy work of
sacking what logs would strand or eddy in the lazy current; would
roll into the faster waters the component parts of what were by
courtesy called jams, but which were in reality pile-ups of a few
hundred logs on sand bars mid-stream; and in the growing tepid
warmth of summer would tramp pleasantly along the river trail. Of
course, a dry year would make necessary a larger crew and more
labour; of course, a big flood might sweep the logs past all
defences into the lake for an irretrievable loss. But such floods
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Chita: A Memory of Last Island by Lafcadio Hearn: And once that she had made him very angry by upsetting the ink
over a mass of business papers, and he had slapped her (could he
ever forgive himself?)--she had cried, through her sobs of
astonishment and pain:--"To laimin moin?--to batte moin!" (Thou
lovest me?--thou beatest me!) Next month she would have been five
years old. To laimin moin?--to batte moin! ...
A furious paroxysm of grief convulsed him, suffocated him; it
seemed to him that something within must burst, must break. He
flung himself down upon his bed, biting the coverings in order to
stifle his outcry, to smother the sounds of his despair. What
crime had he ever done, oh God! that he should be made to suffer
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