| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Children of the Night
A Book of Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson
To the Memory of my Father and Mother
Contents
The Children of the Night
Three Quatrains
The World
An Old Story
Ballade of a Ship
Ballade by the Fire
Ballade of Broken Flutes
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: Now, because I have once or twice said, in my inconsiderate way of talking,
That I was confident the following memoirs of my uncle Toby's courtship of
widow Wadman, whenever I got time to write them, would turn out one of the
most complete systems, both of the elementary and practical part of love
and love-making, that ever was addressed to the world--are you to imagine
from thence, that I shall set out with a description of what love is?
whether part God and part Devil, as Plotinus will have it--
--Or by a more critical equation, and supposing the whole of love to be as
ten--to determine with Ficinus, 'How many parts of it--the one,--and how
many the other;'--or whether it is all of it one great Devil, from head to
tail, as Plato has taken upon him to pronounce; concerning which conceit of
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Ivanhoe by Walter Scott: she made to him expressed impatience and despair.
He complied with her request, and answered her
challenge in a large wine-cup; she then proceeded
with her story, as if appeased by his complaisance.
``I was not born,'' she said, ``father, the wretch
that thou now seest me. I was free, was happy,
was honoured, loved, and was beloved. I am now
a slave, miserable and degraded---the sport of my
masters' passions while I had yet beauty---the object
of their contempt, scorn, and hatred, since it
has passed away. Dost thou wonder, father, that
Ivanhoe |
