| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Human Drift by Jack London: be sent up the first time the royal yards were struck.
"Fortunately," as Dana describes it, "I got through without any
word from the officer; and heard the 'well done' of the mate, when
the yard reached the deck, with as much satisfaction as I ever
felt at Cambridge on seeing a 'bene' at the foot of a Latin
exercise."
"This was the first time I had taken a weather ear-ring, and I
felt not a little proud to sit astride of the weather yard-arm,
past the ear-ring, and sing out 'Haul out to leeward!'" He had
been over a year at sea before he essayed this able seaman's task,
but he did it, and he did it with pride. And with pride, he went
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Whence Provence and Apulia grieve already
The plant is as inferior to its seed,
As more than Beatrice and Margaret
Costanza boasteth of her husband still.
Behold the monarch of the simple life,
Harry of England, sitting there alone;
He in his branches has a better issue.
He who the lowest on the ground among them
Sits looking upward, is the Marquis William,
For whose sake Alessandria and her war
Make Monferrat and Canavese weep."
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: darkness, sometimes seeming to get a little lighter and
sometimes growing denser still.
'A pity I listened to Nikita,' he thought. 'We ought to have
driven on. We should have come out somewhere, if only back to
Grishkino and stayed the night at Taras's. As it is we must
sit here all night. But what was I thinking about? Yes, that
God gives to those who take trouble, but not to loafers,
lie-abeds, or fools. I must have a smoke!'
He sat down again, got out his cigarette-case, and stretched
himself flat on his stomach, screening the matches with the
skirt of his coat. But the wind found its way in and put out
Master and Man |
