| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dreams by Olive Schreiner: years, and some die there.
At last for the hunter a faint light played along the horizon, and he rose
to follow it; and he reached that light at last, and stepped into the broad
sunshine. Then before him rose the almighty mountains of Dry-facts and
Realities. The clear sunshine played on them, and the tops were lost in
the clouds. At the foot many paths ran up. An exultant cry burst from the
hunter. He chose the straightest and began to climb; and the rocks and
ridges resounded with his song. They had exaggerated; after all, it was
not so high, nor was the road so steep! A few days, a few weeks, a few
months at most, and then the top! Not one feather only would he pick up;
he would gather all that other men had found--weave the net--capture Truth-
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: 'See,' he remarked, 'with envy, see
A man with such a fist as me!
Bearded and ringed, and big, and brown,
I sit and toss the stingo down.
Hear the gold jingle in my bag -
All won beneath the Jolly Flag!'
Ben moralised and shook his head:
'You wanderers earn and eat your bread.
The foe is found, beats or is beaten,
And, either how, the wage is eaten.
And after all your pully-hauly
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Aspern Papers by Henry James: the finest of all mounted figures, unless that of Marcus Aurelius,
who rides benignant before the Roman Capitol, be finer:
but I was not thinking of that; I only found myself staring
at the triumphant captain as if he had an oracle on his lips.
The western light shines into all his grimness at that hour
and makes it wonderfully personal. But he continued to look
far over my head, at the red immersion of another day--
he had seen so many go down into the lagoon through the centuries--
and if he were thinking of battles and stratagems they
were of a different quality from any I had to tell him of.
He could not direct me what to do, gaze up at him as I might.
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