| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: the man ready; and to work I went again with my penny version-
books, having fallen back in one day from the printed author to the
manuscript student.
III
From this defunct periodical I am going to reprint one of my own
papers. The poor little piece is all tail-foremost. I have done
my best to straighten its array, I have pruned it fearlessly, and
it remains invertebrate and wordy. No self-respecting magazine
would print the thing; and here you behold it in a bound volume,
not for any worth of its own, but for the sake of the man whom it
purports dimly to represent and some of whose sayings it preserves;
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the
rich. Some one wrote to me in trouble, 'When you are not on your
pedestal you are not interesting.' How remote was the writer from
what Matthew Arnold calls 'the Secret of Jesus.' Either would have
taught him that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and
if you want an inscription to read at dawn and at night-time, and
for pleasure or for pain, write up on the walls of your house in
letters for the sun to gild and the moon to silver, 'Whatever
happens to oneself happens to another.'
Christ's place indeed is with the poets. His whole conception of
Humanity sprang right out of the imagination and can only be
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Bear a moment, heavy laden, weary hand and weeping eye.
Lo, the feet of your deliverer; lo, the hour of freedom here.
VARIANT FORM OF THE PRECEDING POEM
COME to me, all ye that labour; I will give your spirits rest;
Here apart in starry quiet I will give you rest.
Come to me, ye heavy laden, sin defiled and care opprest,
In your father's quiet mansions, soon to prove a welcome guest.
But an hour you bear your trial, sin and suffer, bleed and die;
But an hour you toil and combat here in day's inspiring eye.
See the feet of your deliverer; lo, the hour of freedom nigh.
I NOW, O FRIEND, WHOM NOISELESSLY THE SNOWS
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