| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: were they dissociated?
I was so far in my reflections when, as I have said, a side
light began to shine upon the subject from the laboratory table.
I began to perceive more deeply than it has ever yet been stated,
the trembling immateriality, the mistlike transience, of this
seemingly so solid body in which we walk attired. Certain agents
I found to have the power to shake and pluck back that fleshly
vestment, even as a wind might toss the curtains of a pavilion.
For two good reasons, I will not enter deeply into this scientific
branch of my confession. First, because I have been made to learn
that the doom and burthen of our life is bound for ever on man's
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: been induced by a gleam of fine weather in the winter to escape
from his master, he was soon oppressed by the rigour of the
season.
v. 119. The hermit Piero.] Piero Pettinagno, a holy hermit of
Florence.
v. 141. That vain multitude.] The Siennese. See Hell, Canto
XXIX. 117. "Their acquisition of Telamone, a seaport on the
confines of the Maremma, has led them to conceive hopes of
becoming a naval power: but this scheme will prove as chimerical
as their former plan for the discovery of a subterraneous stream
under their city." Why they gave the appellation of Diana to the
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey: of little Fay's trail. All the way down the knoll, through the
shrubbery, round and round a cottonwood, Fay's vagrant fancy left
records of her sweet musings and innocent play. Long had she
lingered round a bird-nest to leave therein the gaudy wing of a
butterfly. Long had she played beside the running stream sending
adrift vessels freighted with pebbly cargo. Then she had wandered
through the deep grass, her tiny feet scarcely turning a fragile
blade, and she had dreamed beside some old faded flowers. Thus
her steps led her into the broad lane. The little dimpled
imprints of her bare feet showed clean-cut in the dust they went
a little way down the lane; and then, at a point where they
Riders of the Purple Sage |
