| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion. . .
that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain. . .
that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. . .
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: And I dream'd of hours with joy o'erflowing,
Golden, truly blest,
While thine image so beloved was glowing
Deep within my breast.
Now to the card-table hast thou bound me,
'Midst the torches glare?
Whilst unhappy faces are around me,
Dost thou hold me there?
Spring-flow'rs are to me more rapture-giving,
Now conceal'd from view;
Where thou, angel, art, is Nature living,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: took my seat in the vehicle and set out for the station-house. It
was my good fortune to enjoy the company of a gentleman--one Mr.
Smooth-it-away--who, though he had never actually visited the
Celestial City, yet seemed as well acquainted with its laws,
customs, policy, and statistics, as with those of the City of
Destruction, of which he was a native townsman. Being, moreover,
a director of the railroad corporation and one of its largest
stockholders, he had it in his power to give me all desirable
information respecting that praiseworthy enterprise.
Our coach rattled out of the city, and at a short distance from
its outskirts passed over a bridge of elegant construction, but
Mosses From An Old Manse |
