| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: change of wind; there is a risk also of not being able to land at
night on the inhospitable Hastings beach, and of sleeping, as best
you can, on board: but in the long days and settled fine weather
of summer, the trip, in a stout boat, ought to be a safe and a
pleasant one.
On the Diamond you will find many, or most of those gay creatures
which attract your eye in the central row of tanks at the
Zoological Gardens: great twisted masses of Serpulae, (26) those
white tubes of stone, from the mouth of which protrude pairs of
rose-coloured or orange fans, flashing in, quick as light, the
moment that your finger approaches them or your shadow crosses the
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Too small to let her through.
Your letters--fragrant cloisters faint with music.
The music that assuaged her there was you.
How many times she heard your step ascending
Yet never saw your face!
She heard them turn again, ring slowly fainter,
Till silence swept the place.
Why had you gone? . . . The door, perhaps, mistaken . . .
You would go elsewhere. The deep walls were shaken.
A certain rose-leaf--sent without intention--
Became, with time, a woven web of fire--
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: shrivelled up before her eyes. Underneath the likings and spites,
the comings together and partings, great things were happening--
terrible things, because they were so great. Her sense of safety
was shaken, as if beneath twigs and dead leaves she had seen
the movement of a snake. It seemed to her that a moment's respite
was allowed, a moment's make-believe, and then again the profound
and reasonless law asserted itself, moulding them all to its liking,
making and destroying.
She looked at Rachel walking beside her, still crushing the leaves
in her fingers and absorbed in her own thoughts. She was in love,
and she pitied her profoundly. But she roused herself from
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