| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: The Wilderness
Come away! come away! there's a frost along the marshes,
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water;
There's a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us.
There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of autumn
Put off the summer's languor with a touch that made us glad
For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot follow,
To the slopes of other valleys and the sounds of other shores.
Come away! come away! you can hear them calling, calling,
Calling us to come to them, and roam no more.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Pagan and Christian Creeds by Edward Carpenter: gone so far--forgetting, I suppose, the Stoics--as to
claim that Christianity's chief mark is its high morality,
and that the pagans generally were quite wanting in
the moral sense! This, of course, is a profound
mistake. I should say that, in the true sense of the
word, the early and tribal peoples have been much more
'moral' as a rule--that is, ready as individuals to pay
respect to the needs of the community--than the later and
more civilized societies. But the mistake arises from the
different interpretations of the word; for whereas all
the pagan religions insisted very strongly on the just-
Pagan and Christian Creeds |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: in becoming for a time very powerful, the others coalesced
against him; but no sooner were they victorious, than they
were again hostile to each other. The other day, at the
Anniversary of the Independence, high mass was performed, the
President partaking of the sacrament: during the _Te Deum
laudamus_, instead of each regiment displaying the Peruvian
flag, a black one with death's head was unfurled. Imagine
a government under which such a scene could be ordered, on
such an occasion, to be typical of their determination of
fighting to death! This state of affairs happened at a time
very unfortunately for me, as I was precluded from taking
The Voyage of the Beagle |
