| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: A cold clear April evening . . . snow, bedraggled,
Rain-worn snow, dappling the hideous grass . . .
And someone walking alone; and someone saying
That all must end, for the time had come to go . . . '
These were the phrases . . . but behind, beneath them
A greater shadow moved: and in this shadow
I stood and guessed . . . Was it the blue-eyed lady?
The one who always danced in golden slippers--
And had I danced with her,--upon this music?
Or was it further back--the unplumbed twilight
Of childhood?--No--much recenter than that.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: Oh, once tell true, euen for my sake,
Durst thou a lookt vpon him, being awake?
And hast thou kill'd him sleeping? O braue tutch:
Could not a worme, an Adder do so much?
An Adder did it: for with doubler tongue
Then thine (thou serpent) neuer Adder stung
Dem. You spend your passion on a mispris'd mood,
I am not guiltie of Lysanders blood:
Nor is he dead for ought that I can tell
Her. I pray thee tell me then that he is well
Dem. And if I could, what should I get therefore?
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: super-Nettletons, where girls in better clothes than
Belle Balch's talked fluently of architecture to young
men with hands like Lucius Harney's. Then she
remembered his sudden pause when he had come close to
the desk and had his first look at her. The sight had
made him forget what he was going to say; she recalled
the change in his face, and jumping up she ran over the
bare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit a
candle, and lifted it to the square of looking-glass on
the white-washed wall. Her small face, usually so
darkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orb of
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