| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: bend of this clear Swiftwater stream where you made your last cast;
your cheery voice will never again ring out through the deepening
twilight where you are lingering for your disciple to catch up with
you; he will never again hear you call: "Hallo, my boy! What luck?
Time to go home!" But there is a river in the country where you
have gone, is there not?--a river with trees growing all along it--
evergreen trees; and somewhere by those shady banks, within sound
of clear running waters, I think you will be dreaming and waiting
for your boy, if he follows the trail that you have shown him even
to the end.
1895.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: to let our consciences be tyrannized over. The nobles must look to it, and
clip its wings betimes.
Jetter. It is a great bore. Whenever it comes into their worships' heads to
break into my house, and I am sitting there at my work, humming a French
psalm, thinking nothing about it, neither good nor bad--singing it just
because it is in my throat;--forthwith I'm a heretic, and am clapped into
prison. Or if I am passing through the country, and stand near a crowd
listening to a new preacher, one of those who have come from Germany;
instantly I'm called a rebel, and am in danger of losing my head! Have you
ever heard one of these preachers?
Soest. Brave fellows! Not long ago, I heard one of them preach in a field,
Egmont |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Edingburgh Picturesque Notes by Robert Louis Stevenson: perhaps in Manor Glen among the rowans, and the old
people receiving the parcel with moist eyes and a prayer
for Jock or Jean in the city? For at this season, on the
threshold of another year of calamity and stubborn
conflict, men feel a need to draw closer the links that
unite them; they reckon the number of their friends, like
allies before a war; and the prayers grow longer in the
morning as the absent are recommended by name into God's
keeping.
On the day itself, the shops are all shut as on a
Sunday; only taverns, toyshops, and other holiday
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