The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll: You may hunt it with forks and hope;
You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
You may charm it with smiles and soap--' "
("That's exactly the method," the Bellman bold
In a hasty parenthesis cried,
"That's exactly the way I have always been told
That the capture of Snarks should be tried!")
" 'But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!'
The Hunting of the Snark |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: Or did you love the god of flies who plagued
the Hebrews and was splashed
With wine unto the waist? or Pasht, who had
green beryls for her eyes?
Or that young god, the Tyrian, who was more
amorous than the dove
Of Ashtaroth? or did you love the god of the
Assyrian
Whose wings, like strange transparent talc, rose
high above his hawk-faced head,
Painted with silver and with red and ribbed with
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: He for ever will lament it,--
May it to your good be found!
And I now will kindly warn him,
And I now will madly tell him
Whatsoe'er my mind conceiveth,
What within my bosom heaveth.
But my thoughts, my inmost feelings--
Those a secret shall remain."
1821.
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III. THE PARIAH'S THANKS.
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