| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: place, with a cross at his head and a cross at his feet, and call
the place Cross Ness for evermore; Gudrida, the magnificent widow,
who wins hearts and sees strange deeds from Iceland to Greenland,
and Greenland to Vinland and back, and at last, worn out and sad,
goes off on a pilgrimage to Rome; Helgi and Finnbogi, the
Norwegians, who, like our Arctic voyagers in after times, devise all
sorts of sports and games to keep the men in humour during the long
winter at Hope; and last, but not least, the terrible Freydisa, who,
when the Norse are seized with a sudden panic at the Esquimaux and
flee from them, as they had three weeks before fled from Thorfinn's
bellowing bull, turns, when so weak that she cannot escape, single-
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Girl with the Golden Eyes by Honore de Balzac: putrid exhalations of courts and streets and sewers. But let us turn
to the vast saloons, gilded and airy; the hotels in their gardens, the
rich, indolent, happy moneyed world. There the faces are lined and
scarred with vanity. There nothing is real. To seek for pleasure is it
not to find /ennui/? People in society have at an early age warped
their nature. Having no occupation other than to wallow in pleasure,
they have speedily misused their sense, as the artisan has misused
brandy. Pleasure is of the nature of certain medical substances: in
order to obtain constantly the same effects the doses must be doubled,
and death or degradation is contained in the last. All the lower
classes are on their knees before the wealthy, and watch their tastes
The Girl with the Golden Eyes |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Your pale hands rest palm downwards on your knees;
These strange vagaries of yours are all too plain.
'But why perplex ourselves with tedious problems
Of art or . . . such things? . . . while we sit here, living,
With all that's in our secret hearts to say!--'
Hearts?--Your pale hand softly strokes the satin.
You play deep music--know well what you play.
You stroke the satin with thrilling of finger-tips,
You smile, with faintly perfumed lips,
You loose your thoughts like birds,
Brushing our dreams with soft and shadowy words . .
|
