| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe
to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose
that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he
gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due
to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any
departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a
living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope--fervently
do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by
Second Inaugural Address |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: At each stride a mile he measured;
Lurid seemed the sky above him,
Lurid seemed the earth beneath him,
Hot and close the air around him,
Filled with smoke and fiery vapors,
As of burning woods and prairies,
For his heart was hot within him,
Like a living coal his heart was.
So he journeyed westward, westward,
Left the fleetest deer behind him,
Left the antelope and bison;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: the compassionate bowels of all who hear it, nay, all who come to hear
it in the course of time. Turn, O miserable, hard-hearted animal,
turn, I say, those timorous owl's eyes upon these of mine that are
compared to radiant stars, and thou wilt see them weeping trickling
streams and rills, and tracing furrows, tracks, and paths over the
fair fields of my cheeks. Let it move thee, crafty, ill-conditioned
monster, to see my blooming youth- still in its teens, for I am not
yet twenty- wasting and withering away beneath the husk of a rude
peasant wench; and if I do not appear in that shape now, it is a
special favour Senor Merlin here has granted me, to the sole end
that my beauty may soften thee; for the tears of beauty in distress
Don Quixote |
