| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Voices jangle about her, jeers, and laughter. . . .
She trembles, tries to hurry, averts her eyes.
Tell us the truth, old lady! where have you been?
She turns and turns, her brain grows dark with cries.
Look at the old fool tremble! She's been paying,--
Paying good money, too,--to talk to spirits. . . .
She thinks she's heard a message from one dead!
What did he tell you? Is he well and happy?
Don't lie to us--we all know what he said.
He said the one he murdered once still loves him;
He said the wheels in wheels of time are broken;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Ah! and he felt the ring on her finger, that sorrowful token.
So by the side of each other they quietly sat and in silence,
But the maiden began to speak, and said, "How delightful
Is the light of the moon! The clearness of day it resembles.
Yonder I see in the town the houses and courtyards quite plainly,
In the gable a window; methinks all the panes I can reckon."
"That which you see," replied the youth, who spoke with an effort,
"That is our house down to which I now am about to conduct you,
And that window yonder belongs to my room in the attic,
Which will probably soon be yours, as we're making great changes.
All these fields are ours, and ripe for the harvest to-morrow;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: "they'll wash you to death there." For these people a bath possesses
more terror than the gallows or the grave.
In one room, with a wee window, lies a women dying of consumption;
wasted wan, and wretched, lying on rags and swarming with vermin.
Her little son, a boy of eight years, nestles beside her. His cheeks
are scarlet, his eyes feverishly bright, and he has a hard cough.
"It's the chills, mum," says the little chap. Six beds stand close
together in another room; one is empty. Three days ago a woman died
there and the body has just been taken away. It hasn't disturbed the
rest of the inmates to have death present there. A woman is lying on
the wrecks of a bedstead, slats and posts sticking out in every
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
