| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Episode Under the Terror by Honore de Balzac: favor of you."
Still the women were silent.
"If I am annoying you--if--if I am intruding, speak freely, and I will
go; but you must understand that I am entirely at your service; that
if I can do anything for you, you need not fear to make use of me. I,
and I only, perhaps, am above the law, since there is no King now."
There was such a ring of sincerity in the words that Sister Agathe
hastily pointed to a chair as if to bid their guest be seated. Sister
Agathe came of the house of Langeais; her manner seemed to indicate
that once she had been familiar with brilliant scenes, and had
breathed the air of courts. The stranger seemed half pleased, half
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: it, stretch its shining length, and then curl over and lap its
smooth sides, and by-and-by begin to lash itself into rage and show
its white teeth and spring at its bars, and howl the cry of its
mad, but, to me, harmless fury. - And then, - to look at it with
that inward eye, - who does not love to shuffle off time and its
concerns, at intervals, - to forget who is President and who is
Governor, what race he belongs to, what language he speaks, which
golden-headed nail of the firmament his particular planetary system
is hung upon, and listen to the great liquid metronome as it beats
its solemn measure, steadily swinging when the solo or duet of
human life began, and to swing just as steadily after the human
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: They would not laggard and impeded seem
To any one who had those lights divine
Seen come towards us, leaving the gyration
Begun at first in the high Seraphim.
And behind those that most in front appeared
Sounded "Osanna!" so that never since
To hear again was I without desire.
Then unto us more nearly one approached,
And it alone began: "We all are ready
Unto thy pleasure, that thou joy in us.
We turn around with the celestial Princes,
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
