| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: At fifty-six, if this be true,
Am I a poet fit for you;
Or at the age of forty-three,
Are you a subject fit for me?
Adieu bright wit, and radiant eyes;
You must be grave, and I be wise.
Our fate in vain we would oppose,
But I'll be still your friend in prose;
Esteem and friendship to express,
Will not require poetic dress;
And if the muse deny her aid
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: By a strong rope I scaled the palace wall,
With purport to revenge my father's murder -
Ay! with that purport I confess, my lord.
This much I will acknowledge, and this also,
That as with stealthy feet I climbed the stair
Which led unto the chamber of the Duke,
And reached my hand out for the scarlet cloth
Which shook and shivered in the gusty door,
Lo! the white moon that sailed in the great heaven
Flooded with silver light the darkened room,
Night lit her candles for me, and I saw
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: "There is some one on the stairs!" cried the other nun, opening a
hiding-place contrived in the roof.
This time it was easy to hear, amid the deepest silence, a sound
echoing up the staircase; it was a man's tread on the steps covered
with dried lumps of mud. With some difficulty the priest slipped into
a kind of cupboard, and the nun flung some clothes over him.
"You can shut the door, Sister Agathe," he said in a muffled voice.
He was scarcely hidden before three raps sounded on the door. The holy
women looked into each other's eyes for counsel, and dared not say a
single word.
They seemed both to be about sixty years of age. They had lived out of
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