| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: So that it seems a fire that melts a taper;
E'en thus was I without a tear or sigh,
Before the song of those who sing for ever
After the music of the eternal spheres.
But when I heard in their sweet melodies
Compassion for me, more than had they said,
"O wherefore, lady, dost thou thus upbraid him?"
The ice, that was about my heart congealed,
To air and water changed, and in my anguish
Through mouth and eyes came gushing from my breast.
She, on the right-hand border of the car
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds
himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to
dramatize an appalling condition.
In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check.
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words
of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they
were signing a promissory note to which every American was to
fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be
guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.
It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Vailima Letters by Robert Louis Stevenson: great crowd at the end of the pier, and the troops out, and a
chief or two in the height of Samoa finery, and Seumanu
coming in his boat (the oarsmen all in uniform), bringing the
Faamasino Sili sure enough. It was lucky he was no longer;
the natives would not have waited many weeks. But think of
it, as I sat in the saddle at the outside of the crowd
(looking, the English consul said, as if I were commanding
the manoeuvres), I was nearly knocked down by a stampede of
the three consuls; they had been waiting their guest at the
Matafele end, and some wretched intrigue among the whites had
brought him to Apia, and the consuls had to run all the
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