| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: other, the second he had recognised, hung over him in a way that
showed how he was still propped and pillowed. He took it all in,
and the more he took it the more it seemed to suffice: he was as
much at peace as if he had had food and drink. It was the two
women who had found him, on Mrs. Muldoon's having plied, at her
usual hour, her latch-key - and on her having above all arrived
while Miss Staverton still lingered near the house. She had been
turning away, all anxiety, from worrying the vain bell-handle - her
calculation having been of the hour of the good woman's visit; but
the latter, blessedly, had come up while she was still there, and
they had entered together. He had then lain, beyond the vestibule,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: he had recovered already from the disease of hope;
and only Miss Bessie Carvil knew that he said noth-
ing about his son's return because with him it was
no longer "next week," "next month," or even
"next year." It was "to-morrow."
In their intimacy of back yard and front gar-
den he talked with her paternally, reasonably, and
dogmatically, with a touch of arbitrariness. They
met on the ground of unreserved confidence, which
was authenticated by an affectionate wink now and
then. Miss Carvil had come to look forward rather
To-morrow |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...
I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
* * * *
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Prufrock/Other Observations |
