| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: don't believe in planting oaks in flower-pots, - but such a poem as
"The Rosebud" makes one's heart a proselyte to the culture it grows
from. Talk about it as much as you like, - one's breeding shows
itself nowhere more than in his religion. A man should be a
gentleman in his hymns and prayers; the fondness for "scenes,"
among vulgar saints, contrasts so meanly with that -
"God only and good angels look
Behind the blissful scene,"-
and that other, -
"He could not trust his melting soul
But in his Maker's sight," -
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: These kids you see.
LYCIDAS
But surely I had heard
That where the hills first draw from off the plain,
And the high ridge with gentle slope descends,
Down to the brook-side and the broken crests
Of yonder veteran beeches, all the land
Was by the songs of your Menalcas saved.
MOERIS
Heard it you had, and so the rumour ran,
But 'mid the clash of arms, my Lycidas,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost: appear rational after it had succeeded. I begged of him to
shorten his visit, in order that he might with the less
difficulty be admitted next morning. He was accordingly admitted
as readily as on his first visit. He had put on so serious an
air, moreover, that a stranger would have taken him for a
respectable person.
"When I found in my hand the instrument of my liberty, I no
longer doubted my success. It was certainly a strange and a bold
project; but of what was I not capable, with the motives that
inspired me? I had, since I was allowed permission to walk in
the galleries, found opportunities of observing that every night
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