| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Voice of Age
She'd look upon us, if she could,
As hard as Rhadamanthus would;
Yet one may see, -- who sees her face,
Her crown of silver and of lace,
Her mystical serene address
Of age alloyed with loveliness, --
That she would not annihilate
The frailest of things animate.
She has opinions of our ways,
And if we're not all mad, she says, --
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: clouds, and half deceive ourselves with the pastime of our own
fancy.
If we must needs pry closely into the matter, it may be doubted
whether there was any real change, after all, in the sordid,
wornout worthless, and ill-jointed substance of the scarecrow;
but merely a spectral illusion, and a cunning effect of light and
shade so colored and contrived as to delude the eyes of most men.
The miracles of witchcraft seem always to have had a very shallow
subtlety; and, at least, if the above explanation do not hit the
truth of the process, I can suggest no better.
"Well puffed, my pretty lad!" still cried old Mother Rigby.
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: remitting vigilance.
A succession of men had sat in that chair. I be-
came aware of that thought suddenly, vividly, as
though each had left a little of himself between the
four walls of these ornate bulkheads; as if a sort of
composite soul, the soul of command, had whispered
suddenly to mine of long days at sea and of anxious
moments.
"You, too!" it seemed to say, "you, too, shall
taste of that peace and that unrest in a searching
intimacy with your own self--obscure as we were
The Shadow Line |
