| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: There were tears for what had vanished as they vanished where they fell.
Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless,
There were some whose only passion was for Time who made them cold:
There were numerous fair women in the Valley of the Shadow,
Dreaming rather less of heaven than of hell when they were old.
Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow,
There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile;
And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers,
Having covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while.
There were many by the presence of the many disaffected,
Whose exemption was included in the weight that others bore:
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells: the stations and along the northward-running roads. By mid-
day a Martian had been seen at Barnes, and a cloud of slowly
sinking black vapour drove along the Thames and across the
flats of Lambeth, cutting off all escape over the bridges in its
sluggish advance. Another bank drove over Ealing, and sur-
rounded a little island of survivors on Castle Hill, alive, but
unable to escape.
After a fruitless struggle to get aboard a North-Western
train at Chalk Farm--the engines of the trains that had loaded
in the goods yard there PLOUGHED through shrieking people,
and a dozen stalwart men fought to keep the crowd from
War of the Worlds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Essays of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: with grains of beauty and lighted up by expressive eyes. Four
stowaways had been found aboard our ship before she left the Clyde,
but these two had alone escaped the ignominy of being put ashore.
Alick, my acquaintance of last night, was Scots by birth, and by
trade a practical engineer; the other was from Devonshire, and had
been to sea before the mast. Two people more unlike by training,
character, and habits it would be hard to imagine; yet here they were
together, scrubbing paint.
Alick had held all sorts of good situations, and wasted many
opportunities in life. I have heard him end a story with these
words: 'That was in my golden days, when I used finger-glasses.'
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