| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: "To-morrow."
She never tried again, for fear the man should
go out of his mind on the spot. He depended on
her. She seemed the only sensible person in the
town; and he would congratulate himself frankly
before her face on having secured such a level-
headed wife for his son. The rest of the town, he
confided to her once, in a fit of temper, was certainly
queer. The way they looked at you--the way they
talked to you! He had never got on with any one
in the place. Didn't like the people. He would
To-morrow |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Not to weaken water's gentle fall,
Carefully cleanse out the channels all;
Salamander, snake, and rush, and reed,--
All destroy,--each monster and each weed.
If thus pure ye earth and water keep,
Through the air the sun will gladly peep,
Where he, worthily enshrined in space,
Worketh life, to life gives holy grace.
Ye, by toil on toil so sorely tried,
Comfort take, the All is purified;
And now man, as priest, may boldly dare
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Life of the Spider by J. Henri Fabre: contemptible advantage. Most men disappear without leaving an echo
to repeat their name; they lie buried in forgetfulness, the worst
of graves.
Others, among the naturalists, benefit by the designation given to
this or that object in life's treasure-house: it is the skiff
wherein they keep afloat for a brief while. A patch of lichen on
the bark of an old tree, a blade of grass, a puny beastie: any one
of these hands down a man's name to posterity as effectively as a
new comet. For all its abuses, this manner of honouring the
departed is eminently respectable. If we would carve an epitaph of
some duration, what could we find better than a Beetle's wing-case,
The Life of the Spider |
