| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: dictionary? I do not know that we can say anything, but that
it is a prodigiously amusing exhibition for a line or so.
The worst of it is, that Whitman must have known better. The
man is a great critic, and, so far as I can make out, a good
one; and how much criticism does it require to know that
capitulation is not description, or that fingering on a dumb
keyboard, with whatever show of sentiment and execution, is
not at all the same thing as discoursing music? I wish I
could believe he was quite honest with us; but, indeed, who
was ever quite honest who wrote a book for a purpose? It is
a flight beyond the reach of human magnanimity.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Can tell us what it is. We only know
That once long after midnight, years ago,
A stranger galloped up from Tilbury Town,
Who brushed, and scared, and all but overran
That skirt-crazed reprobate, John Evereldown.
Sonnet
Oh for a poet -- for a beacon bright
To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray;
To spirit back the Muses, long astray,
And flush Parnassus with a newer light;
To put these little sonnet-men to flight
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: had been made to arrest him. It was then, however, that the Prince
Prospero, maddening with rage and the shame of his own momentary
cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six chambers, while none
followed him on account of a deadly terror that had seized upon
all. He bore aloft a drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid
impetuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreating figure,
when the latter, having attained the extremity of the velvet
apartment, turned suddenly and confronted his pursuer. There was
a sharp cry--and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable carpet,
upon which, instantly afterwards, fell prostrate in death the
Prince Prospero. Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a
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