| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: And yet, and yet, I would not have them know --
Am I not floating in a mist of light?
O lift me up and I shall reach the sun!
Sappho
The twilight's inner flame grows blue and deep,
And in my Lesbos, over leagues of sea,
The temples glimmer moonwise in the trees.
Twilight has veiled the little flower face
Here on my heart, but still the night is kind
And leaves her warm sweet weight against my breast.
Am I that Sappho who would run at dusk
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Schoolmistress and Other Stories by Anton Chekhov: prayers, but here we are worse off than any pigs. It's four
days and nights since I have taken off my boots."
Yasha, staggering from the jolting of the train, opens the
lantern and snuffs out the wick with his wet fingers. The light
flares up, hisses like a frying pan and goes out.
"Yes, my lad," Malahin goes on, as he feels Yasha lie down beside
him and the young man's huge back huddle against his own, "it's
cold. There is a draught from every crack. If your mother or your
sister were to sleep here for one night they would be dead by
morning. There it is, my lad, you wouldn't study and go to the
high school like your brothers, so you must take the cattle with
 The Schoolmistress and Other Stories |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: At the termination of this sentence I started, and for a
moment, paused; for it appeared to me (although I at once
concluded that my excited fancy had deceived me)--it appeared to
me that, from some very remote portion of the mansion, there
came, indistinctly, to my ears, what might have been, in its
exact similarity of character, the echo (but a stifled and dull
one certainly) of the very cracking and ripping sound which Sir
Launcelot had so particularly described. It was, beyond doubt,
the coincidence alone which had arrested my attention; for, amid
the rattling of the sashes of the casements, and the ordinary
commingled noises of the still increasing storm, the sound, in
 The Fall of the House of Usher |