| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave by Frederick Douglass: up among slaveholders around us. Moreover, slaves
are like other people, and imbibe prejudices quite
common to others. They think their own better than
that of others. Many, under the influence of this
prejudice, think their own masters are better than
the masters of other slaves; and this, too, in some
cases, when the very reverse is true. Indeed, it is
not uncommon for slaves even to fall out and quar-
rel among themselves about the relative goodness of
their masters, each contending for the superior good-
ness of his own over that of the others. At the very
The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: developed a pain in her chest; her tongue looked as if it were coated
with smoke, and the leeches they applied did not relieve her
oppression; and on the ninth evening she died, being just seventy-two
years old.
People thought that she was younger, because her hair, which she wore
in bands framing her pale face, was brown. Few friends regretted her
loss, for her manner was so haughty that she did not attract them.
Felicite mourned for her as servants seldom mourn for their masters.
The fact that Madame should die before herself perplexed her mind and
seemed contrary to the order of things, and absolutely monstrous and
inadmissible. Ten days later (the time to journey from Besancon), the
A Simple Soul |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: Or did she only live to be at death the food of worms.
The Cloud reclind upon his airy throne and answerd thus.
Then if thou art the food of worms, O virgin of the skies,
How great thy use, how great thy blessing, every thing that lives.
Lives not alone nor or itself: fear not and I will call,
The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice.
Come forth worm and the silent valley, to thy pensive queen.
The helpless worm arose and sat upon the Lillys leaf,
And the bright Cloud saild on, to find his partner in the vale.
III.
Then Thel astonish'd view'd the Worm upon its dewy bed.
Poems of William Blake |
