| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: I have heart-fire and singing to give,
I can tread on the grass or the stars,
Now at last I can live!
IN A RAILROAD STATION
WE stood in the shrill electric light,
Dumb and sick in the whirling din
We who had all of love to say
And a single second to say it in.
"Good-by!" "Good-by!"--you turned to go,
I felt the train's slow heavy start,
You thought to see me cry, but oh
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: You see, Miss Morland, the injustice of your suspicions.
Here was I, in my eagerness to get on, refusing to wait
only five minutes for my sister, breaking the promise
I had made of reading it aloud, and keeping her in
suspense at a most interesting part, by running away
with the volume, which, you are to observe, was her own,
particularly her own. I am proud when I reflect on it,
and I think it must establish me in your good opinion."
"I am very glad to hear it indeed, and now I shall
never be ashamed of liking Udolpho myself. But I really
thought before, young men despised novels amazingly."
Northanger Abbey |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: from the leviathanic brotherhood any sea creature hitherto identified
with the whale by the best informed Nantucketers; nor, on the other
hand, link with it any fish hitherto authoritatively regarded as
alien.* Hence, all the smaller, spouting, and horizontal tailed fish
must be included in this ground-plan of Cetology. Now, then, come
the grand divisions of the entire whale host.
*I am aware that down to the present time, the fish styled Lamatins
and Dugongs (Pig-fish and Sow-fish of the Coffins of Nantucket) are
included by many naturalists among the whales. But as these pig-fish
are a noisy, contemptible set, mostly lurking in the mouths of
rivers, and feeding on wet hay, and especially as they do not spout,
Moby Dick |
