| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: But thou, shrieking harbinger,
Foul pre-currer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.
From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.
Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-defying swan,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: Bridge, and the hum of men's work fills the river with a menacing,
muttering note as of a breathless, ever-driving gale. The water-
way, so fair above and wide below, flows oppressed by bricks and
mortar and stone, by blackened timber and grimed glass and rusty
iron, covered with black barges, whipped up by paddles and screws,
overburdened with craft, overhung with chains, overshadowed by
walls making a steep gorge for its bed, filled with a haze of smoke
and dust.
This stretch of the Thames from London Bridge to the Albert Docks
is to other watersides of river ports what a virgin forest would be
to a garden. It is a thing grown up, not made. It recalls a
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: Is one with king and millionaire
In this that each is groping
On different roads, in different ways,
To come to glad, contented days,
And shares the common hoping.
The sound of martial fife and drum
Is born of happiness to come.
Yet happiness is always here
Had we the eyes to see it;
No breast but holds a fund of cheer
Had man the will to free it.
A Heap O' Livin' |
