| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: And here come the terms of capitulation; for he does not
surrender unconditionally, even in this sore strait: "And yet
if any," he goes on, "think me enemy to the person, or yet to
the regiment, of her whom God hath now promoted, they are
utterly deceived in me, FOR THE MIRACULOUS WORK OF GOD,
COMFORTING HIS AFFLICTED BY MEANS OF AN INFIRM VESSEL, I DO
ACKNOWLEDGE, AND THE POWER OF HIS MOST POTENT HAND I WILL
OBEY. MORE PLAINLY TO SPEAK, IF QUEEN ELIZABETH SHALL
CONFESS, THAT THE EXTRAORDINARY DISPENSATION OF GOD'S GREAT
MERCY MAKETH THAT LAWFUL UNTO HER WHICH BOTH NATURE AND GOD'S
LAW DO DENY TO ALL WOMEN, then shall none in England be more
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Tear the noble hear of Britain, leave it gorily quivering?
Bark an answer, Britain's raven! bark and blacken innumerable,
Blacken round the Roman carrion, make the carcase a skeleton,
Kite and kestrel, wolf and wolfkin, from the wilderness, wallow in it,
Till the face of Bel be brighten'd, Taranis be propitiated.
Lo their colony half-defended! lo their colony, Camulodune!
There the horde of Roman robbers mock at a barbarous adversary.
There the hive of Roman liars worship a gluttonous emperor-idiot.
Such is Rome, and this her deity: hear it, Spirit of Cassivelaun!
`Hear it, Gods! the Gods have heard it, O Icenian, O Coritanian!
Doubt not ye the Gods have answer'd, Catieuchlanian, Trinobant.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: faint, had perhaps even quite evaporated, that, and that only, was
failure. It wouldn't have been failure to be bankrupt,
dishonoured, pilloried, hanged; it was failure not to be anything.
And so, in the dark valley into which his path had taken its
unlooked-for twist, he wondered not a little as he groped. He
didn't care what awful crash might overtake him, with what ignominy
or what monstrosity he might yet he associated--since he wasn't
after all too utterly old to suffer--if it would only be decently
proportionate to the posture he had kept, all his life, in the
threatened presence of it. He had but one desire left--that he
shouldn't have been "sold."
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