| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Along high terraces quicker than dream they flew.
And some of them steadily glowed, and some soon vanished,
And some strange shadows threw.
And behind them all the ghosts of thoughts went moving,
Restlessly moving in each lamplit room,
From chair to mirror, from mirror to fire;
From some, the light was scarcely more than a gloom:
From some, a dazzling desire.
And there was one, beneath black eaves, who thought,
Combing with lifted arms her golden hair,
Of the lover who hurried towards her through the night;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Hellenica by Xenophon: time enough then again to invite all who cared to protect the
principle of autonomy to march against its opponents. "In this way,"
he added, "I think the goodwill of heaven will be secured, and the
states will suffer least annoyance." But the Assembly, on hearing
these views, agreed that this man was talking nonsense. Puppets in the
hands of fate![1] An unseen power, it would seem, was already driving
them onwards; so they sent instructions to Cleombrotus not to disband
the army, but to march straight against the Thebans if they refused to
recognise the autonomy of the states. [Cleombrotus, it is understood,
had, on hearing the news of the establishment of peace, sent to the
ephorate to ask for guidance; and then they sent him the above
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: Mrs. Smith, a genteel person with a sharp nose,
made her put on a black dress every afternoon. I
don't know what induced me to notice her at all.
There are faces that call your attention by a cu-
rious want of definiteness in their whole aspect, as,
walking in a mist, you peer attentively at a vague
shape which, after all, may be nothing more cu-
rious or strange than a signpost. The only pecu-
liarity I perceived in her was a slight hesitation in
her utterance, a sort of preliminary stammer which
passes away with the first word. When sharply
Amy Foster |
