| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: The affection in the look, if it be such
That all the soul is wrapt away by it,
So, by the flaming of the effulgence holy
To which I turned, I recognized therein
The wish of speaking to me somewhat farther.
And it began: "In this fifth resting-place
Upon the tree that liveth by its summit,
And aye bears fruit, and never loses leaf,
Are blessed spirits that below, ere yet
They came to Heaven, were of such great renown
That every Muse therewith would affluent be.
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: The overseer lives with them, and has a loaded revolver in his
pocket and a savage dog at his heels. <112>
For the first week or two after their arrival, the foresters
and other permanent officials keep guard at night over the houses
they are put into. I suppose they find it sleepy work;
for certain it is that spring after spring the same thing happens,
fifty of them getting away in spite of all our precautions,
and we are left with our mouths open and much out of pocket.
This spring, by some mistake, they arrived without their bundles,
which had gone astray on the road, and, as they travel in their
best clothes, they refused utterly to work until their luggage came.
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: The tide has turned. Ya, Tuan. The tide has turned."
Lingard looked downward where the water could be seen, gliding
past the ship's side, moving smoothly, streaked with lines of
froth, across the illumined circle thrown round the brig by the
lights on her poop. Air bubbles sparkled, lines of darkness,
ripples of glitter appeared, glided, went astern without a
splash, without a trickle, without a plaint, without a break. The
unchecked gentleness of the flow captured the eye by a subtle
spell, fastened insidiously upon the mind a disturbing sense of
the irretrievable. The ebbing of the sea athwart the lonely sheen
of flames resembled the eternal ebb-tide of time; and when at
The Rescue |
