| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: Those few they find awake first meet their fate;
Then to their fellows they unbar the gate.
"'T was in the dead of night, when sleep repairs
Our bodies worn with toils, our minds with cares,
When Hector's ghost before my sight appears:
A bloody shroud he seem'd, and bath'd in tears;
Such as he was, when, by Pelides slain,
Thessalian coursers dragg'd him o'er the plain.
Swoln were his feet, as when the thongs were thrust
Thro' the bor'd holes; his body black with dust;
Unlike that Hector who return'd from toils
 Aeneid |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: caught sight of him kneeling in real adoration before a great
picture that had just been brought from Venice, and that seemed to
herald the worship of some new gods. On another occasion he had
been missed for several hours, and after a lengthened search had
been discovered in a little chamber in one of the northern turrets
of the palace gazing, as one in a trance, at a Greek gem carved
with the figure of Adonis. He had been seen, so the tale ran,
pressing his warm lips to the marble brow of an antique statue that
had been discovered in the bed of the river on the occasion of the
building of the stone bridge, and was inscribed with the name of
the Bithynian slave of Hadrian. He had passed a whole night in
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: without a word; then I asked,--
"Haven't you a wife, or some good friend?"
He cast upon us one of the most lamentable glances that I ever saw as
he answered,--
"If I had a wife I must abandon my father; I could not feed him and a
wife and children too."
"Well, my poor lad, why don't you try to earn more at the salt
marshes, or by carrying the salt to the harbor?"
"Ah, monsieur, I couldn't do that work three months. I am not strong
enough, and if I died my father would have to beg. I am forced to take
a business which only needs a little knack and a great deal of
|