| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Fall insignificant on my closing ears,
What sound shall come but the old cry of the wind
In our inclement city? what return
But the image of the emptiness of youth,
Filled with the sound of footsteps and that voice
Of discontent and rapture and despair?
So, as in darkness, from the magic lamp,
The momentary pictures gleam and fade
And perish, and the night resurges - these
Shall I remember, and then all forget.
Apemama.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: doom), then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood's
pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round
again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies
the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails
the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the
foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose
unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity
lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.
And that same day, too, gazing far down from his boat's side into
that same golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured:--
"Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride's
Moby Dick |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: my palazzo? Am I awake? Here I am, in that woman's bed, and she
certainly thinks herself at home--she has taken off her cloak! Have I,
like Vendramin, inhaled opium, and am I in the midst of one of those
dreams in which he sees Venice as it was three centuries ago?"
The unknown fair one, seated in front of a dressing-table blazing with
wax lights, was unfastening her frippery with the utmost calmness.
"Ring for Giulia," said she; "I want to get my dress off."
At that instant, the Duke noticed that the supper had been disturbed;
he looked round the room, and discovered the Prince's trousers hanging
over a chair at the foot of the bed.
"Clarina, I will not ring!" cried the Duke, in a shrill voice of fury.
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