| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: The wild wind hath planted the wild weed: yet ere
You exclaim, 'Fling the weed to the flames,' think again
Why the field is so barren. With all other men
First love, though it perish from life, only goes
Like the primrose that falls to make way for the rose.
For a man, at least most men, may love on through life:
Love in fame; love in knowledge; in work: earth is rife
With labor, and therefor, with love, for a man.
If one love fails, another succeeds, and the plan
Of man's life includes love in all objects! But I?
All such loves from my life through its whole destiny
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: of orange clouds, tingeing with its cheerful rays the crests
of the black waves. Watch was impatiently kept from the
different look-outs. Towards eleven o'clock in the morning a
ship, with sails full set, was signalled as in view; two
others followed at the distance of about half a knot. They
approached like arrows shot from the bow of a skillful
archer; and yet the sea ran so high that their speed was as
nothing compared to the rolling of the billows in which the
vessels were plunging first in one direction and then in
another. The English fleet was soon recognized by the line
of the ships, and by the color of their pennants; the one
Ten Years Later |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: at night; his palate so unsophisticated that, like a child,
he disliked the taste of wine - or perhaps, living in
America, had never tasted any that was good; and his
knowledge of nature was so complete and curious that he could
have told the time of year, within a day or so, by the aspect
of the plants. In his dealings with animals, he was the
original of Hawthorne's Donatello. He pulled the woodchuck
out of its hole by the tail; the hunted fox came to him for
protection; wild squirrels have been seen to nestle in his
waistcoat; he would thrust his arm into a pool and bring
forth a bright, panting fish, lying undismayed in the palm of
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