| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: the sea in a more or less reputable way. He would have heard of
channels and sandbanks, of natural features of the land useful for
sea-marks, of villages and tribes and modes of barter and
precautions to take: with the instructive tales about native
chiefs dyed more or less blue, whose character for greediness,
ferocity, or amiability must have been expounded to him with that
capacity for vivid language which seems joined naturally to the
shadiness of moral character and recklessness of disposition. With
that sort of spiced food provided for his anxious thought, watchful
for strange men, strange beasts, strange turns of the tide, he
would make the best of his way up, a military seaman with a short
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Simple were so well compounded.
That it cried how true a twain
Seemeth this concordant one!
Love hath reason, reason none
If what parts can so remain.
Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supreme and stars of love;
As chorus to their tragic scene.
THRENOS.
Beauty, truth, and rarity.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: I spied and plucked by the green hair
A foe more resolute to live,
The toothed and killing sensitive.
He, semi-conscious, fled the attack;
He shrank and tucked his branches back;
And straining by his anchor-strand,
Captured and scratched the rooting hand.
I saw him crouch, I felt him bite;
And straight my eyes were touched with sight.
I saw the wood for what it was:
The lost and the victorious cause,
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