| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: I a light canoe will build me,
Build a swift Cheemaun for sailing,
That shall float on the river,
Like a yellow leaf in Autumn,
Like a yellow water-lily!
"Lay aside your cloak, O Birch-tree!
Lay aside your white-skin wrapper,
For the Summer-time is coming,
And the sun is warm in heaven,
And you need no white-skin wrapper!"
Thus aloud cried Hiawatha
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: Therefore I repeat, let no man talk to me of these and the like
expedients, 'till he hath at least some glympse of hope, that
there will ever be some hearty and sincere attempt to put them
into practice.
But, as to my self, having been wearied out for many years with
offering vain, idle, visionary thoughts, and at length utterly
despairing of success, I fortunately fell upon this proposal,
which, as it is wholly new, so it hath something solid and real,
of no expence and little trouble, full in our own power, and
whereby we can incur no danger in disobliging England. For this
kind of commodity will not bear exportation, and flesh being of
A Modest Proposal |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Herodias by Gustave Flaubert: After a time the party returned to the court. Heavy, round bronze
lids, sunk in the stones of the pavement, covered the cisterns of the
palace. Vitellius noticed that one of these was larger than the
others, and that when struck by his foot it had not their sonority. He
struck them all, one after another; then stamped upon the ground and
shouted:
"I have found it! I have found the buried treasure of Herod!"
Searching for buried treasure was a veritable mania among the Romans.
The tetrarch swore that no treasure was hidden in that spot.
"What is concealed there, then?" the proconsul demanded.
"Nothing--that is, only a man--a prisoner."
Herodias |
