| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: forward, bird-like, over the glassy surface of the water; while at
intervals the broad-shouldered young oarsman who was seated third from
the bow would raise, as from a nightingale's throat, the opening
staves of a boat song, and then be joined by five or six more, until
the melody had come to pour forth in a volume as free and boundless as
Russia herself. And Pietukh, too, would give himself a shake, and help
lustily to support the chorus; and even Chichikov felt acutely
conscious of the fact that he was a Russian. Only Platon reflected:
"What is there so splendid in these melancholy songs? They do but
increase one's depression of spirits."
The journey homeward was made in the gathering dusk. Rhythmically the
Dead Souls |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: left that raw pine creaking caravansary for the cool shade of a
clump of pines between whose trunks glimmered tents.
A batch of United States troopers came down the road and flung
themselves across the country into their rough lines. The
Melican cavalryman can ride, though he keeps his accoutrements
pig-fashion and his horse cow-fashion.
I was free of that camp in five minutes--free to play with the
heavy, lumpy carbines, have the saddles stripped, and punch the
horses knowingly in the ribs. One of the men had been in the
fight with "Wrap-up-his-Tail," and he told me how that great
chief, his horse's tail tied up in red calico, swaggered in front
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: Till we arise link'd in a golden band and never part:
But walk united bearing food to all our tender flowers.
Dost thou O little cloud? I fear that I am not like thee:
For I walk through the vales of Har, and smell the sweetest flowers:
But I feed not the little flowers: I hear the warbling birds,
But I feed not the warbling birds, they fly and seek their food:
But Thel delights in these no more because I fade away
And all shall say, without a use this shining women liv'd,
Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms.
The Cloud reclind upon his airy throne and answerd thus.
Then if thou art the food of worms, O virgin of the skies,
Poems of William Blake |
