| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: That held a thousand scorpions, and crushed them,
If only by so poisonous a trial
I could have crushed his doubt. I would have wrung
My living blood with mediaeval engines
Out of my screaming flesh, if only that
Would have made one man sure. I would have paid
For him the tiresome price of body and soul,
And let the lash of a tongue-weary town
Fall as it might upon my blistered name;
And while it fell I could have laughed at it,
Knowing that he had found out finally
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mrs. Warren's Profession by George Bernard Shaw: forget. "Knowledge is power" she said; "and I never sell power."
Thats more than twenty years ago; and she has never made use of
her power or caused me a moment's uneasiness. You are behaving
worse to me than she did, Frank.
FRANK. Oh yes I dare say! Did you ever preach at her the way
you preach at me every day?
REV. S. [wounded almost to tears] I leave you, sir. You are
incorrigible. [He turns towards the gate].
FRANK [utterly unmoved] Tell them I shant be home to tea, will
you, gov'nor, like a good fellow? [He moves towards the cottage
door and is met by Praed and Vivie coming out].
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: She sat still and waited for the traditions in which she had always
believed to speak and save her. But they were dumb. She belonged
to an ultra-refined civilization which tries to cheat nature with
elegant sophistries. Cheat nature? Bah! One generation may do
it, perhaps two, but the third-- Can we ever rise above nature or
sink below her? Did she not turn on Jerusalem as upon Sodom, upon
St. Anthony in his desert as upon Nero in his seraglio? Does she
not always cry in brutal triumph: "I am here still, at the bottom
of things, warming the roots of life; you cannot starve me nor tame
me nor thwart me; I made the world, I rule it, and I am its
destiny."
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |
