| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: being abroad.
Even when they cut it short and called him "Patte," as they usually
did, it had a very foreign sound. Everything about him was in
harmony with it; he spoke and laughed and sang and thought and felt
in French--the French of two hundred years ago, the language of
Samuel de Champlain and the Sieur de Monts, touched with a strong
woodland flavour. In short, my guide, philosopher, and friend, Pat,
did not have a drop of Irish in him, unless, perhaps, it was a
certain--well, you shall judge for yourself, when you have heard
this story of his virtue, and the way it was rewarded.
It was on the shore of the Lac a la Belle Riviere, fifteen miles
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: The pine-trees waved as waves a woman's hair,
And in the orchards every twining spray
Was breaking into flakes of blossoming foam:
But when I knew that far away at Rome
In evil bonds a second Peter lay,
I wept to see the land so very fair.
TURIN.
Poem: San Miniato
See, I have climbed the mountain side
Up to this holy house of God,
Where once that Angel-Painter trod
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Odyssey by Homer: carried this bard off to a desert island and left him there for
crows and seagulls to batten upon--after which she went
willingly enough to the house of Aegisthus. Then he offered many
burnt sacrifices to the gods, and decorated many temples with
tapestries and gilding, for he had succeeded far beyond his
expectations.
"Meanwhile Menelaus and I were on our way home from Troy, on
good terms with one another. When we got to Sunium, which is the
point of Athens, Apollo with his painless shafts killed Phrontis
the steersman of Menelaus' ship (and never man knew better how
to handle a vessel in rough weather) so that he died then and
 The Odyssey |