| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: The moon put out her placid light
And black and low
RIVERS TO THE SEA
Nearer the heavy thunder drew,
Hushing the voices . . . yet he knew
That he would go.
* * * * * *
A quick-spun thread of lightning burns,
And for a flash the day returns--
He only hears
Joseph, an old man bent and white
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Chance by Joseph Conrad: advanced, in a common-sense tone, that, surely, in the matter of
marriage a man had only himself to please.
Mrs. Fyne received this without the flutter of an eyelid. Fyne's
masculine breast, as might have been expected, was pierced by that
old, regulation shaft. He grunted most feelingly. I turned to him
with false simplicity. "Don't you agree with me?"
"The very thing I've been telling my wife," he exclaimed in his
extra-manly bass. "We have been discussing--"
A discussion in the Fyne menage! How portentous! Perhaps the very
first difference they had ever had: Mrs. Fyne unflinching and ready
for any responsibility, Fyne solemn and shrinking--the children in
Chance |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: had almost disappeared from the prairie; when all the fields were
under fence, and the roads no longer ran about like wild things,
but followed the surveyed section-lines, Mr. Shimerda's
grave was still there, with a sagging wire fence around it,
and an unpainted wooden cross. As grandfather had predicted,
Mrs. Shimerda never saw the roads going over his head.
The road from the north curved a little to the east just there,
and the road from the west swung out a little to the south;
so that the grave, with its tall red grass that was never mowed,
was like a little island; and at twilight, under a new moon
or the clear evening star, the dusty roads used to look
My Antonia |
