| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: 'I am the one you followed through crowded streets,
The one who escaped you, the one with red-gleamed hair.'
'I am the one you saw to-day, who fell
Senseless before you, hearing a certain bell:
A bell that broke great memories in my brain.'
'I am the one who passed unnoticed before you,
Invisible, in a cloud of secret pain.'
'I am the one who suddenly cried, beholding
The face of a certain man on the dazzling screen.
They wrote me that he was dead. It was long ago.
I walked in the streets for a long while, hearing nothing,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Dead Souls by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol: But youth is fortunate in the fact that always before it there lies a
future; and in proportion as the time for his leaving school drew
nigh, Tientietnikov's heart began to beat higher and higher, and he
said to himself: "This is not life, but only a preparation for life.
True life is to be found in the Public Service. There at least will
there be scope for activity." So, bestowing not a glance upon that
beautiful corner of the world which never failed to strike the guest
or chance visitor with amazement, and reverencing not a whit the dust
of his ancestors, he followed the example of most ambitious men of his
class by repairing to St. Petersburg (whither, as we know, the more
spirited youth of Russia from every quarter gravitates--there to enter
Dead Souls |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: confess, they had effected little. It was his part, by one
striking act of martyrdom, to direct all men's eyes on that
distressful country. At a blow, and with the price of his life, he
made the place illustrious and public. And that, if you will
consider largely, was the one reform needful; pregnant of all that
should succeed. It brought money; it brought (best individual
addition of them all) the sisters; it brought supervision, for
public opinion and public interest landed with the man at Kalawao.
If ever any man brought reforms, and died to bring them, it was he.
There is not a clean cup or towel in the Bishop-Home, but dirty
Damien washed it.
|
