| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Upon the half-thawed snow the bleating sheep
Press close against the hurdles, and the shivering house-dogs creep
From the shut stable to the frozen stream
And back again disconsolate, and miss
The bawling shepherds and the noisy team;
And overhead in circling listlessness
The cawing rooks whirl round the frosted stack,
Or crowd the dripping boughs; and in the fen the ice-pools crack
Where the gaunt bittern stalks among the reeds
And flaps his wings, and stretches back his neck,
And hoots to see the moon; across the meads
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: prevail there, we do not expect to find any such thing so far off.
Otherwise, what are their buildings to the palaces and royal
buildings of Europe? What their trade to the universal commerce of
England, Holland, France, and Spain? What are their cities to
ours, for wealth, strength, gaiety of apparel, rich furniture, and
infinite variety? What are their ports, supplied with a few junks
and barks, to our navigation, our merchant fleets, our large and
powerful navies? Our city of London has more trade than half their
mighty empire: one English, Dutch, or French man-of-war of eighty
guns would be able to fight almost all the shipping belonging to
China: but the greatness of their wealth, their trade, the power
Robinson Crusoe |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from I Have A Dream by Martin Luther King, Jr.: sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of
liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the
pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So
let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.
Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let
freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!
Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!
Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!
But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!
Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!
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