| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: While he was here alive who could answer them,
And in their teeth fling confirmations
Harder than agates against an egg-shell?
But now the man was dead, and would come again
Never, though she might honor ineffably
The flimsy wraith of him she conjured
Out of a dream with his wand of absence.
And if the truth were now but a mummery,
Meriting pride's implacable irony,
So much the worse for pride. Moreover,
Save her or fail, there was conscience always.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs: screened from the building by the wall upon that exposure.
Close in they dismounted, and leaving the animals in
charge of the shopkeeper of Tafelberg, Barney and Butzow
hastened toward a small postern-gate which swung, groan-
ing, upon a single rusted hinge. Each felt that there was no
time for caution or stratagem. Instead all depended upon
the very boldness and rashness of their attack, and so as
they came through into the courtyard the two dashed
headlong for the building.
Chance accomplished for them what no amount of careful
execution might have done, and they came within the ruin
The Mad King |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: Henry V, we get Bates and Williams drawn with all respect and honor as
normal rank and file men. In Julius Caesar, Shakespear went to work
with a will when he took his cue from Plutarch in glorifying regicide
and transfiguring the republicans. Indeed hero-worshippers have never
forgiven him for belittling Caesar and failing to see that side of his
assassination which made Goethe denounce it as the most senseless of
crimes. Put the play beside the Charles I of Wills, in which Cromwell
is written down to a point at which the Jack Cade of Henry VI becomes
a hero in comparison; and then believe, if you can, that Shakespear
was one of them that "crook the pregnant hinges of the knee where
thrift may follow fawning." Think of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern,
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