| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: commentator and the industrious winnower of words, facts, and dates to
despair. The narrator believes in it, as all superstitious minds in
Flanders likewise believe; and is not a whit wiser nor more credulous
than his audience. But as it would be impossible to make a harmony of
all the different renderings, here are the outlines of the story;
stripped, it may be, of its picturesque quaintness, but with all its
bold disregard of historical truth, and its moral teachings approved
by religion--a myth, the blossom of imaginative fancy; an allegory
that the wise may interpret to suit themselves. To each his own
pasturage, and the task of separating the tares from the wheat.
The boat that served to carry passengers from the Island of Cadzand to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: isle, the toddy-cutters sit on high, and are rocked by the trade,
and have a view far to seaward, where they keep watch for sails,
and like huge birds utter their songs in the morning. They sing
with a certain lustiness and Bacchic glee; the volume of sound and
the articulate melody fall unexpected from the tree-top, whence we
anticipate the chattering of fowls. And yet in a sense these songs
also are but chatter; the words are ancient, obsolete, and sacred;
few comprehend them, perhaps no one perfectly; but it was
understood the cutters 'prayed to have good toddy, and sang of
their old wars.' The prayer is at least answered; and when the
foaming shell is brought to your door, you have a beverage well
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Burst a white blossom. -- Can love reason why?
Horace to Leuconoe
I pray you not, Leuconoe, to pore
With unpermitted eyes on what may be
Appointed by the gods for you and me,
Nor on Chaldean figures any more.
'T were infinitely better to implore
The present only: -- whether Jove decree
More winters yet to come, or whether he
Make even this, whose hard, wave-eaten shore
Shatters the Tuscan seas to-day, the last --
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