| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Alone on darkened waters I fall and rise;
Slow waves above me break, faint waves of cries.
'And then these colors . . . but who would dare describe them?
This faint rose-coral pink . . this green--pistachio?--
So insubstantial! Like the dim ghostly things
Two lovers find in love's still-twilight chambers . . .
Old peacock-fans, and fragrant silks, and rings . . .
'Rings, let us say, drawn from the hapless fingers
Of some great lady, many centuries nameless,--
Or is that too sepulchral?--dulled with dust;
And necklaces that crumble if you touch them;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Lady Baltimore by Owen Wister: Northerners cannot realize the difference between Kings Port and Georgia,
and consequently they make much of her. Her features do undoubtedly
possess beauty. A Newport woman--the new kind--has even taken her to
Worth! And yet, after all, she has remained for John. We heard a great
deal of her men, too. She took care of that, of course. John Mayrant
actually followed her to Newport.
"But," I couldn't help crying out, "I thought he was so poor!"
"The phosphates," my hostess explained. "They had been discovered on his
land. And none of her New York men had come forward. So John rushed back
happy." At this point a very singular look came over the face of my
hostess, and she continued: "There have been many false reports (and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: of Protestantism and Puritanism, this tendency reached
such an extreme that, as some one has said, each
man was absorbed in polishing up his own little soul in a
corner to himself, in entire disregard to the damnation which
might come to his neighbor. Religion, and Morality
too, under the commercial regime became, as was natural,
perfectly selfish. It was always: "Am _I_ saved? Am
_I_ doing the right thing? Am _I_ winning the favor of God
and man? Will my claims to salvation be allowed?
Did _I_ make a good bargain in allowing Jesus to be crucified
for me?" The poison of a diseased self-consciousness entered
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
