| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: For many is a long one, and as dark,
Meanwhile, as dreams of hell. See not your toil
Too much, and if I be away from you,
Think of me as a brother to yourselves,
Of many blemishes. Beware of stoics,
And give your left hand to grammarians;
And when you seem, as many a time you may,
To have no other friend than hope, remember
That you are not the first, or yet the last.
The best of life, until we see beyond
The shadows of ourselves (and they are less
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Heroes by Charles Kingsley: from their seats they never rose, but stiffened, each man
where he sat, into a ring of cold gray stones.
Then Perseus turned and left them, and went down to his
galley in the bay; and he gave the kingdom to good Dictys,
and sailed away with his mother and his bride.
And Polydectes and his guests sat still, with the wine-cups
before them on the board, till the rafters crumbled down
above their heads, and the walls behind their backs, and the
table crumbled down between them, and the grass sprung up
about their feet: but Polydectes and his guests sit on the
hillside, a ring of gray stones until this day.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: which I carefully preserved in a little paper box, intending to
observe his habits and development. Seeing Dr. Bandinel near,
I asked him to look at my curiosity. Hardly, however, had I turned
the wriggling little victim out upon the leather-covered table,
when down came the doctor's great thumb-nail upon him,
and an inch-long smear proved the tomb of all my hopes,
while the great bibliographer, wiping his thumb on his coat sleeve,
passed on with the remark, "Oh, yes! they have black heads sometimes."
That was something to know--another fact for the entomologist;
for my little gentleman had a hard, shiny, white head,
and I never heard of a black-headed bookworm before or since.
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