| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: To what the eternal evening brings.
Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,
We have built a tower of stone high into the sky,
We have built a city of towers.
Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.
Our souls are light; they have shaken a burden of hours . . .
What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . .
Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Historical Lecturers and Essays by Charles Kingsley: that for the reform of St. Andrew's, must be judged by Scotsmen,
rather than by an Englishman; but all that one knows of it justifies
Melville's sentence in the well-known passage in his memoirs,
wherein he describes the tutors and household of the young king.
"Mr. George was a Stoic philosopher, who looked not far before him;"
in plain words, a high-minded and right-minded man, bent on doing
the duty which lay nearest him. The worst that can be said against
him during these times is, that his name appears with the sum of 100
pounds against it, as one of those "who were to be entertained in
Scotland by pensions out of England;" and Ruddiman, of course,
comments on the fact by saying that Buchanan "was at length to act
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: Thy discontent thou didst bequeath to me.
XI.
Venus, with young Adonis sitting by her
Under a myrtle shade, began to woo him:
She told the youngling how god Mars did try her,
And as he fell to her, so fell she to him.
'Even thus,' quoth she, 'the warlike god embraced me,'
And then she clipp'd Adonis in her arms;
'Even thus,' quoth she, 'the warlike god unlaced me,'
As if the boy should use like loving charms;
'Even thus,' quoth she, 'he seized on my lips
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