| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: myriad meanings, and makes it marvellous for us, and sets it in
some new relation to the age, so that it becomes a vital portion of
our lives, and a symbol of what we pray for, or perhaps of what,
having prayed for, we fear that we may receive. The longer I
study, Ernest, the more clearly I see that the beauty of the
visible arts is, as the beauty of music, impressive primarily, and
that it may be marred, and indeed often is so, by any excess of
intellectual intention on the part of the artist. For when the
work is finished it has, as it were, an independent life of its
own, and may deliver a message far other than that which was put
into its lips to say. Sometimes, when I listen to the overture to
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Black Dwarf by Walter Scott: "I am much obliged to you, Elshie, and certainly shall not fail
to consult you, with so comfortable a hope from your assistance."
"Do not flatter yourself too far," replied the Hermit, "with the
hope that I will positively yield to the frailty of pity. Why
should I snatch a dupe, so well fitted to endure the miseries of
life as you are, from the wretchedness which his own visions, and
the villainy of the world, are preparing for him? Why should I
play the compassionate Indian, and, knocking out the brains of
the captive with my tomahawk, at once spoil the three days'
amusement of my kindred tribe, at the very moment when the brands
were lighted, the pincers heated, the cauldrons boiling, the
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: where he is?"
He answered deliberately.
"On the other side of this rock. I buried him there myself."
She pressed her hands to her breast, struggled for her breath for a
moment, then: "Ohhh! . . . You buried him! . . . What sort of man
are you? . . . You dared not tell! . . . He is another of your
victims? . . . You dared not confess that evening. . . . You must
have killed him. What could he have done to you? . . . You
fastened on him some atrocious quarrel and . . ."
Her vengeful aspect, her poignant cries left him as unmoved as the
weary rock against which he leaned. He only raised his eyelids to
Within the Tides |
