| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: Mercifull Powers, restraine in me the cursed thoughts
That Nature giues way to in repose.
Enter Macbeth, and a Seruant with a Torch.
Giue me my Sword: who's there?
Macb. A Friend
Banq. What Sir, not yet at rest? the King's a bed.
He hath beene in vnusuall Pleasure,
And sent forth great Largesse to your Offices.
This Diamond he greetes your Wife withall,
By the name of most kind Hostesse,
And shut vp in measurelesse content
Macbeth |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: "Tell me what you're saying to me now, John Gorham,
Or you'll never see as much of me as ribbons any more;
I'll vanish in as many ways as I have toes and fingers,
And you'll not follow far for one where flocks have been before." --
"I'm sorry now you never saw the flocks, Jane Wayland,
But you're the one to make of them as many as you need.
And then about the vanishing. It's I who mean to vanish;
And when I'm here no longer you'll be done with me indeed." --
"That's a way to tell me what I am, John Gorham!
How am I to know myself until I make you smile?
Try to look as if the moon were making faces at you,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: formerly it hadn't any, but ran off eastward and arrived nowhere.
By 6 P.M. the face has dissolved and gone, and the goatee
has become what looks like the shadow of a tower with a pointed
roof, and the shoe had turned into what the printers call a
"fist" with a finger pointing.
If I were now imprisoned on a mountain summit a hundred
miles northward of this point, and was denied a timepiece, I
could get along well enough from four till six on clear days, for
I could keep trace of the time by the changing shapes of these
mighty shadows of the Virgin's front, the most stupendous dial I
am acquainted with, the oldest clock in the world by a couple of
What is Man? |
