| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: be content to wait long before she can even get her feet upon the path. If
she has made blunders in the past, if she has weighted herself with a
burden which she must bear to the end, she must but bear the burden
bravely, and labour on. There is no use in wailing and repentance here:
the next world is the place for that; this life is too short. By our
errors we see deeper into life. They help us." She waited for a while.
"If she does all this--if she waits patiently, if she is never cast down,
never despairs, never forgets her end, moves straight toward it, bending
men and things most unlikely to her purpose--she must succeed at last. Men
and things are plastic; they part to the right and left when one comes
among them moving in a straight line to one end. I know it by my own
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And who knows all knows everything
That a patient ghost at last retrieves;
There's more to be known of his harvesting
When Time the thresher unbinds the sheaves;
And there's more to be heard than a wind that grieves
For Briony now in this ageless oak,
Driving the first of its withered leaves
Over the stones where the fountain broke.
Lisette and Eileen
"When he was here alive, Eileen,
There was a word you might have said;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne: get me horses in the morning to set out for Italy.
MARIA. MOULINES.
I NEVER felt what the distress of plenty was in any one shape till
now, - to travel it through the Bourbonnois, the sweetest part of
France, - in the heyday of the vintage, when Nature is pouring her
abundance into every one's lap, and every eye is lifted up, - a
journey, through each step of which Music beats time to LABOUR, and
all her children are rejoicing as they carry in their clusters: to
pass through this with my affections flying out, and kindling at
every group before me, - and every one of them was pregnant with
adventures. -
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