| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: "Stafford was a likely man with ideas of his own --
Though I could never like the kind that likes to live alone;
And when you met, you found his eyes were always on your shoes,
As if they did the talking when he asked you for the news.
"That's all, my son. Were I to talk for half a hundred years
I'd never clear away from there the cloud that never clears.
We buried what was left of it, -- the bar, too, and the chains;
And only for the apple tree there's nothing that remains."
Forty years ago it was I heard the old man say,
"That's all, my son." -- And here again I find the place to-day,
Deserted and told only by the tree that knows the most,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: their greenness.
"The world is a wonderful place," she said, "and wonderfully
beautiful."
"And so's the pit," he said. "Look how it heaps together,
like something alive almost--a big creature that you don't know."
"Yes," she said. "Perhaps!"
"And all the trucks standing waiting, like a string of beasts
to be fed," he said.
"And very thankful I am they ARE standing," she said,
"for that means they'll turn middling time this week."
"But I like the feel of MEN on things, while they're alive.
Sons and Lovers |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: night with fire and candle, like some goodly dining-room; a
passage-like library, walled with books in their wire cages; and a
corridor with a fireplace, benches, a table, many prints of famous
members, and a mural tablet to the virtues of a former secretary.
Here a member can warm himself and loaf and read; here, in defiance
of Senatus-consults, he can smoke. The Senatus looks askance at
these privileges; looks even with a somewhat vinegar aspect on the
whole society; which argues a lack of proportion in the learned
mind, for the world, we may be sure, will prize far higher this
haunt of dead lions than all the living dogs of the professorate.
I sat one December morning in the library of the Speculative; a
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