| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne: courage, 'tis the very answer he would have given; yet it would by no means
have done for me. You see as plain as can be, that I write as a man of
erudition;--that even my similies, my allusions, my illustrations, my
metaphors, are erudite,--and that I must sustain my character properly, and
contrast it properly too,--else what would become of me? Why, Sir, I
should be undone;--at this very moment that I am going here to fill up one
place against a critick,--I should have made an opening for a couple.
--Therefore I answer thus:
Pray, Sir, in all the reading which you have ever read, did you ever read
such a book as Locke's Essay upon the Human Understanding?--Don't answer me
rashly--because many, I know, quote the book, who have not read it--and
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: The Clod of Clay heard the Worms voice & rais'd her pitying head:
She bowd over the weeping infant, and her life exhald
In milky fondness, then on Thel she fix'd her humble eyes
O beauty of the vales of Har, we live not for ourselves,
Thou seest me the meanest thing, and so I am indeed:
My bosom of itself is cold, and of itself is dark,
But he that loves the lowly, pours his oil upon my head
And kisses me, and binds his nuptial bands around my breast.
And says; Thou mother of my children, I have loved thee
And I have given thee a crown that none can take away.
But how this is sweet maid, I know not, and I cannot know
Poems of William Blake |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: But for the rebel in his breast
Had man remained a brute.
When baffled lips demanded speech,
Speech trembled into birth--
(One day the lyric word shall reach
From earth to laughing earth)--
When man's dim eyes demanded light
The light he sought was born--
His wish, a Titan, scaled the height
And flung him back the morn!
From deed to dream, from dream to deed,
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