| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells: an attitude that would certainly have distressed her mother to
see, and horrified her grandmother beyond measure; she sat with
her knees up to her chin and her hands clasped before them, and
she was so lost in thought that she discovered with a start, from
a lettered lamp, that she was at Morningside Park, and thought
she was moving out of the station, whereas she was only moving
in. "Lord!" she said. She jumped up at once, caught up a
leather clutch containing notebooks, a fat text-book, and a
chocolate-and-yellow-covered pamphlet, and leaped neatly from the
carriage, only to discover that the train was slowing down and
that she had to traverse the full length of the platform past it
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy: at his pull. There being no bedstead she had flung down some rugs
and made a little nest for herself in the very cramped quarters
the closet afforded.
When he looked in upon her she sprang out of her lair,
great-eyed and trembling.
"You ought not to have pulled open the door!" she cried excitedly.
"It is not becoming in you! Oh, will you go away; please will you!"
She looked so pitiful and pleading in her white nightgown
against the shadowy lumber-hole that he was quite worried.
She continued to beseech him not to disturb her.
He said: "I've been kind to you, and given you every liberty;
Jude the Obscure |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: His midmost grasp'd the belly, a forefoot
Seiz'd on each arm (while deep in either cheek
He flesh'd his fangs); the hinder on the thighs
Were spread, 'twixt which the tail inserted curl'd
Upon the reins behind. Ivy ne'er clasp'd
A dodder'd oak, as round the other's limbs
The hideous monster intertwin'd his own.
Then, as they both had been of burning wax,
Each melted into other, mingling hues,
That which was either now was seen no more.
Thus up the shrinking paper, ere it burns,
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
