| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: The boom, the foam, and the mad flash of it
All made a magic symphony; but when
I thought upon the coming of hard men
To cut those patriarchal trees away,
And turn to gold the silver of that spray,
I shuddered. Yet a gladness now and then
Did wake me to myself till I was glad
In earnest, and was welcoming the time
For screaming saws to sound above the chime
Of idle waters, and for me to know
The jealous visionings that I had had
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: the serious desertions after the Philips Norton fight, and the flight of
Paymaster Goodenough with the funds for the campaign. The company sat
about the long oak table on which a map was spread, and Colonel Wade was
speaking when Wilding entered.
On his appearance Wade ceased, and every eye was turned upon the
messenger from London. Ferguson, fresh from his sermon, sat with elbows
resting on the table, his long chin supported by his hands, his eyes
gleaming sharply under the shadow of his wig which was pulled down in
front to the level of his eyebrows.
It was the Duke who addressed Mr. Wilding, and the latter's keen ears
were quick to catch the bitterness that underlay his words.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Richard III by William Shakespeare: To yield the ghost, but still the envious flood
Stopp'd in my soul and would not let it forth
To find the empty, vast, and wand'ring air;
But smother'd it within my panting bulk,
Who almost burst to belch it in the sea.
KEEPER. Awak'd you not in this sore agony?
CLARENCE. No, no, my dream was lengthen'd after life.
O, then began the tempest to my soul!
I pass'd, methought, the melancholy flood
With that sour ferryman which poets write of,
Unto the kingdom of perpetual night.
 Richard III |