| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: Poor boy! thou shalt not flaunt thy cloak of red,
Or ride in state through Paris in the van
Of thy returning legions, but instead
Thy mother France, free and republican,
Shall on thy dead and crownless forehead place
The better laurels of a soldier's crown,
That not dishonoured should thy soul go down
To tell the mighty Sire of thy race
That France hath kissed the mouth of Liberty,
And found it sweeter than his honied bees,
And that the giant wave Democracy
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton: Susy had rung the door-bell with a hand trembling with
eagerness--eagerness to be alone, to be quiet, to stare her
situation in the face, and collect herself before she came out
again among her kind. She had stood on the door-step, cowering
among her bags, counting the instants till a step sounded and
the door-knob turned, letting her in from the searching glare of
the outer world .... And now she had sat for an hour in
Violet's drawing-room, in the very house where her honey-moon
might have been spent; and no one had asked her where she had
come from, or why she was alone, or what was the key to the
tragedy written on her shrinking face ....
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished
work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining
before us. . .that from these honored dead we take increased devotion
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