| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: With ineffectual ardour sought to rise.
VII.
The strong man's hand, the snow-cool head of age,
The certain-footed sympathies of youth -
These, and that lofty passion after truth,
Hunger unsatisfied in priest or sage
Or the great men of former years, he needs
That not unworthily would dare to sing
(Hard task!) black care's inevitable ring
Settling with years upon the heart that feeds
Incessantly on glory. Year by year
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: In broken gleaming parodies of clouds,
Rippled in blue, or sending from cool depths
To meet the falling leaf the leaf's clear image,--
This water says, there is some secret in you
Akin to my clear beauty, silently responsive
To all that circles you. This bare tree says,--
Austere and stark and leafless, split with frost,
Resonant in the wind, with rigid branches
Flung out against the sky,--this tall tree says,
There is some cold austerity in you,
A frozen strength, with long roots gnarled on rocks,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Jungle by Upton Sinclair: Even half a year of the sausage machines and the fertilizer mill had
not been able to kill the thought of Christmas in them; there was
a choking in Jurgis' throat as he recalled that the very night Ona
had not come home Teta Elzbieta had taken him aside and shown him
an old valentine that she had picked up in a paper store for three
cents--dingy and shopworn, but with bright colors, and figures of
angels and doves. She had wiped all the specks off this, and was
going to set it on the mantel, where the children could see it.
Great sobs shook Jurgis at this memory--they would spend their
Christmas in misery and despair, with him in prison and Ona ill
and their home in desolation. Ah, it was too cruel! Why at least
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