| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry: are wisest. They are the magi.
End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of THE GIFT OF THE MAGI.
The Gift of the Magi |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: And that fresh blood which youngly thou bestow'st,
Thou mayst call thine when thou from youth convertest,
Herein lives wisdom, beauty, and increase;
Without this folly, age, and cold decay:
If all were minded so, the times should cease
And threescore year would make the world away.
Let those whom nature hath not made for store,
Harsh, featureless, and rude, barrenly perish:
Look, whom she best endow'd, she gave thee more;
Which bounteous gift thou shouldst in bounty cherish:
She carv'd thee for her seal, and meant thereby,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: singly gratified by this return and balance; while in verse
it is all diverted to the measure. To find comparable
passages is hard; for either the versifier is hugely the
superior of the rival, or, if he be not, and still persist in
his more delicate enterprise, he fails to be as widely his
inferior. But let us select them from the pages of the same
writer, one who was ambidexter; let us take, for instance,
Rumour's Prologue to the Second Part of HENRY IV., a fine
flourish of eloquence in Shakespeare's second manner, and set
it side by side with Falstaff's praise of sherris, act iv.
scene iii.; or let us compare the beautiful prose spoken
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