| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Beauty and The Beast by Bayard Taylor: indeed, the loveliness of the picture surpassed our most poetic
anticipations. The low sun was throwing exquisite lights across
the point, painting the slopes of grass of golden green, and giving
a pearly softness to the gray rocks. In the back-ground was drawn
the far-off water-line, over which a few specks of sail glimmered
against the sky. Miss Ringtop, who, with Eunice, Mallory, and
myself, occupied one carriage, expressed her `gushing' feelings in
the usual manner:
"`Where the turf is softest, greenest,
Doth an angel thrust me on,--
Where the landscape lies serenest,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: To guide us, or to blind us for a time,
Till we have eyes indeed. The fire that smites
A few on highways, changing all at once,
Is not for all. The power that holds the world
Away from God that holds himself away --
Farther away than all your works and words
Are like to fly without the wings of faith --
Was not, nor ever shall be, a small hazard
Enlivening the ways of easy leisure
Or the cold road of knowledge. When our eyes
Have wisdom, we see more than we remember;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Allan Quatermain by H. Rider Haggard: extra three or four pounds' weight being a matter of no account
to so strong a man, and the protection afforded to the thighs
being a very important matter to a fighting man not armed with
a shield of any kind -- I suggested that he should lend the other
to Umslopogaas, who was to share the danger and the glory of
his post. He readily consented, and called the Zulu, who came
bearing Sir Henry's axe, which he had now fixed up to his satisfaction,
with him. When we showed him the steel shirt, and explained
to him that we wanted him to wear it, he at first declined, saying
that he had fought in his own skin for thirty years, and that
he was not going to begin now to fight in an iron one. Thereupon
Allan Quatermain |
