| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: settled already on a runaway match without official preliminaries.
This was really a logical decision. Old Nelson (or Nielsen) would
never have agreed to give up Freya peaceably to this compromising
Jasper. Heavens! What would the Dutch authorities say to such a
match! It sounds too ridiculous for words. But there's nothing in
the world more selfishly hard than a timorous man in a fright about
his "little estate," as old Nelson used to call it in apologetic
accents. A heart permeated by a particular sort of funk is proof
against sense, feeling, and ridicule. It's a flint.
Jasper would have made his request all the same and then taken his
own way; but it was Freya who decided that nothing should be said,
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: afternoon, the green of sunbright foliage, stared into that shady
place through door and window; and Herrick, pacing to and fro
on the coral floor, sometimes paused and laved his face and
neck with tepid water from the bucket. His long arrears of
suffering, the night's vigil, the insults of the morning, and the
harrowing business of the letter, had strung him to that point
when pain is almost pleasure, time shrinks to a mere point, and
death and life appear indifferent. To and fro he paced like a
caged brute; his mind whirling through the universe of thought
and memory; his eyes, as he went, skimming the legends on the
wall. The crumbling whitewash was all full of them: Tahitian
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: Crying from your hiding places --
Let me go, I cannot bear
The sorrow of the passing faces.
-- People in the restless street,
Can it be, oh can it be
In the meeting of our eyes
That you know as much of me?
Evening: New York
Blue dust of evening over my city,
Over the ocean of roofs and the tall towers
Where the window-lights, myriads and myriads,
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