| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Through all my limbs a shudder ran,
And on my bruised spirit fell
The dampness of my narrow cell
As night-air on a wounded man,
Giving intolerable pain.
But now a better life began.
I felt the agony decrease
By slow degrees, then wholly cease,
Ending in perfect rest and peace!
It was not apathy, nor dulness,
That weighed and pressed upon my brain,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: mother to help him."
"Noble work? His pictures or his sermons, Lucy?"
demanded Miss Vance, with a contemptuous shrug.
Lucy without reply walked out to the inn garden and
seated herself in a shady corner. There Mr. Perry found
her just as the first stroke of the angelus sounded on
the air. Her book lay unopened on her lap.
He walked slowly up to her and stopped, breathing hard,
as if he had been running. "It is evening now. I have
come for my answer, Miss Dunbar," he said, forcing a
smile.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: For him the tiresome price of body and soul,
And let the lash of a tongue-weary town
Fall as it might upon my blistered name;
And while it fell I could have laughed at it,
Knowing that he had found out finally
Where the wrong was. But there was evil in him
That would have made no more of his possession
Than confirmation of another fault;
And there was honor -- if you call it honor
That hoods itself with doubt and wears a crown
Of lead that might as well be gold and fire.
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