| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: PHILLIP.
Pluck out your eyes, and see not this day's shame!
An arm hath beat an army; one poor David
Hath with a stone foiled twenty stout Goliahs;
Some twenty naked starvelings with small flints,
Hath driven back a puissant host of men,
Arrayed and fenced in all accomplements.
KING JOHN.
Mordieu, they quait at us, and kill us up;
No less than forty thousand wicked elders
Have forty lean slaves this day stoned to death.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: as his blood-red sunrises. They were followed by gray days under
the cover of high, motionless clouds that looked as if carved in a
slab of ash-coloured marble. And each mean starved sunset left us
calling with imprecations upon the West Wind even in its most
veiled misty mood to wake up and give us our liberty, if only to
rush on and dash the heads of our ships against the very walls of
our unapproachable home.
XXIX.
In the atmosphere of the Easterly weather, as pellucid as a piece
of crystal and refracting like a prism, we could see the appalling
numbers of our helpless company, even to those who in more normal
The Mirror of the Sea |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Virginian by Owen Wister: one to sow it and make it grow in these new, wild fields. He
seemed more the sort of gardener to keep old walks and vines
pruned in their antique rigidity. I admired him for coming all
this way with his clean, short, gray whiskers and his black,
well-brushed suit. And he made me think of a powerful locomotive
stuck puffing on a grade.
Meanwhile, the Virginian rode beside me, so silent in his
volcanic wrath that I did not perceive it. The missionary coming
on top of Trampas had been more than he could stand. But I did
not know, and I spoke with innocent cheeriness.
"Is the parson going to save us?" I asked; and I fairly jumped at
The Virginian |
