| 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: How much more shall the strains of poets' wit
Beguile and ravish soft and humane minds?
LODOWICK.
To whom, my Lord, shall I direct my stile?
KING EDWARD.
To one that shames the fair and sots the wise;
Whose bod is an abstract or a brief,
Contains each general virtue in the world.
Better than beautiful thou must begin,
Devise for fair a fairer word than fair,
And every ornament that thou wouldest praise,
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Across The Plains by Robert Louis Stevenson: about his mouth, inscrutable. How small a thing creates an
immortality! I do not think he can have been a man entirely
commonplace; but had he not thrown his cloak about his mouth, or
had the witnesses forgot to chronicle the action, he would not thus
have haunted the imagination of my boyhood, and to-day he would
scarce delay me for a paragraph. An incident, at once romantic and
dramatic, which at once awakes the judgment and makes a picture for
the eye, how little do we realise its perdurable power! Perhaps no
one does so but the author, just as none but he appreciates the
influence of jingling words; so that he looks on upon life, with
something of a covert smile, seeing people led by what they fancy
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Tanglewood Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Colchis. When the king of the country, whose name was Aetes,
heard of their arrival, he instantly summoned Jason to court.
The king was a stern and cruel looking potentate; and though he
put on as polite and hospitable an expression as he could,
Jason did not like his face a whit better than that of the
wicked King Pelias, who dethroned his father. "You are welcome,
brave Jason," said King Aetes. "Pray, are you on a pleasure
voyage?--Or do you meditate the discovery of unknown
islands?--or what other cause has procured me the happiness of
seeing you at my court?"
"Great sir," replied Jason, with an obeisance--for Chiron had
Tanglewood Tales |
