| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: day. With his hand over his eyes, he sat quiet by the fire until
morning. He heard some boy going by in the gray dawn call to
another that they would have holiday on Christmas week. It was
coming, he thought, rousing himself,-- but never as it had been:
that could never be again. Yet it was strange how this thought
of Christmas took hold of him, after this,-- famished his heart.
As it approached in the slow-coming winter, the days growing
shorter, and the nights longer and more solitary, so Margret
became more real to him,--not rejected and lost, but as the wife
she might have been, with the simple, passionate love she gave
him once. The thought grew intolerable to him; yet there was not
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Nor aught could happen under cope of sky,
Nor could there be a sky at all or sun-
Indeed, where matter all one heap would lie,
By having settled during infinite time.
But in reality, repose is given
Unto no bodies 'mongst the elements,
Because there is no bottom whereunto
They might, as 'twere, together flow, and where
They might take up their undisturbed abodes.
In endless motion everything goes on
Forevermore; out of all regions, even
Of The Nature of Things |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: ecclesiastical sentiment, it indeed obtained notoriety; and
sometimes behind an engine furnace, or a railroad bank, you may
detect the pathetic discord of its momentary grace, and, with toil,
decipher its floral carvings choked with soot. I felt answerable to
the schools I loved, only for their injury. I perceived that this
new portion of my strength had also been spent in vain; and from
amidst streets of iron, and palaces of crystal, shrank back at last
to the carving of the mountain and colour of the flower.
And still I could tell of failure, and failure repeated, as years
went on; but I have trespassed enough on your patience to show you,
in part, the causes of my discouragement. Now let me more
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