| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages!
Hugged in the clinging billow's clasp,
From sea-weed fringe to mountain heather,
The British oak with rooted grasp
Her slender handful holds together; -
With cliffs of white and bowers of green,
And Ocean narrowing to caress her,
And hills and threaded streams between, -
Our little mother isle, God bless her!
In earth's broad temple where we stand,
Fanned by the eastern gales that brought us,
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish
good humor at bottom. He had three or four boon companions, who
regarded him as their model, and at the head of whom he scoured
the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for
miles round. In cold weather he was distinguished by a fur cap,
surmounted with a flaunting fox's tail; and when the folks at a
country gathering descried this well-known crest at a distance,
whisking about among a squad of hard riders, they always stood by
for a squall. Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along
past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a
troop of Don Cossacks; and the old dames, startled out of their
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from O Pioneers! by Willa Cather: never been in love, she had never indulged in
sentimental reveries. Even as a girl she had
looked upon men as work-fellows. She had
grown up in serious times.
There was one fancy indeed, which persisted
through her girlhood. It most often came to
her on Sunday mornings, the one day in the
week when she lay late abed listening to the
familiar morning sounds; the windmill singing
in the brisk breeze, Emil whistling as he blacked
O Pioneers! |
