The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: I hear her hurrying feet, - awake, awake,
Thou laggard in love's battle! once at least
Let me drink deep of passion's wine, and slake
My parched being with the nectarous feast
Which even gods affect! O come, Love, come,
Still we have time to reach the cavern of thine azure home.'
Scarce had she spoken when the shuddering trees
Shook, and the leaves divided, and the air
Grew conscious of a god, and the grey seas
Crawled backward, and a long and dismal blare
Blew from some tasselled horn, a sleuth-hound bayed,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Hero of Our Time by M.Y. Lermontov: "What do you want?" asked the captain.
"You are Grushnitski's friend and will no
doubt be his second?"
The captain bowed very gravely.
"You have guessed rightly," he answered.
"Moreover, I am bound to be his second, because
the insult offered to him touches myself also. I
was with him last night," he added, straightening
up his stooping figure.
"Ah! So it was you whose head I struck so
clumsily?" . . .
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Duchesse de Langeais by Honore de Balzac: all combined to give her that instinctive coquetry which seems to
be the consciousness of power. Her shape was graceful; perhaps
there was a trace of self-consciousness in her changes of
movement, the one affectation that could be laid to her charge;
but everything about her was a part of her personality, from her
least little gesture to the peculiar turn of her phrases, the
demure glance of her eyes. Her great lady's grace, her most
striking characteristic, had not destroyed the very French quick
mobility of her person. There was an extraordinary fascination
in her swift, incessant changes of attitude. She seemed as if
she surely would be a most delicious mistress when her corset and
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