| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: The wall's gray stains of damp, the pallet bed
Where little Sister Marta dreams of saints,
Waking with arms outstretched imploringly
That seek to stay a vision's vanishing.
I never had a vision, yet for me
Our Lady smiled while all the convent slept
One winter midnight hushed around with snow --
I thought she might be kinder than the rest,
And so I came to kneel before her feet,
Sick with love's sorrow and love's bitterness.
But when I would have made the blessed sign,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Maggie: A Girl of the Streets by Stephen Crane: having a charlotte-russe and a glass of beer.
"They's gone," he remarked, "they's gone." He looked at her
through the smoke wreaths. "Shay, lil' girl, we mightish well make
bes' of it. You ain't such bad-lookin' girl, y'know. Not half
bad. Can't come up to Nell, though. No, can't do it! Well, I
should shay not! Nell fine-lookin' girl! F--i--n--ine. You look
damn bad longsider her, but by y'self ain't so bad. Have to do
anyhow. Nell gone. On'y you left. Not half bad, though."
Maggie stood up.
"I'm going home," she said.
The mere boy started.
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: actuates that art, and especially when we compare their spirit with
our own. The mainsprings of Far Eastern art may be said to be
three: Nature, Religion, and Humor. Incongruous collection that
they are, all three witness to the same trait. For the first
typifies concrete impersonality, the second abstract impersonality,
while the province of the last is to ridicule personality generally.
Of the trio the first is altogether the most important. Indeed, to
a Far Oriental, so fundamental a part of himself is his love of
Nature that before we view its mirrored image it will be well to
look the emotion itself in the face. The Far Oriental lives in a
long day-dream of beauty. He muses rather than reasons, and all
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