| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Under the Red Robe by Stanley Weyman: and up the ghostly walk between the rose bushes. I wondered
uneasily what the Lieutenant would be at, and what he intended;
but the lanthorn-light which now fell on the ground at our feet,
and now showed one of us to the other, high-lit in a frame of
blackness, discovered nothing in his grizzled face but settled
hostility. He wheeled at the end of the walk to go to the main
door, but as he did so I saw the flutter of a white skirt by the
stone seat against the house, and I stepped that way.
'Mademoiselle?' I said softly. 'Is it you?'
'Clon?' she muttered, her voice quivering. 'What of him?'
'He is past pain,' I answered gently. 'He is dead--yes, dead,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith: Dorothy (taking her hand), you'll own I have been pretty fond of an old
wife.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. Lord, Mr. Hardcastle, you're for ever at your
Dorothys and your old wifes. You may be a Darby, but I'll be no Joan,
I promise you. I'm not so old as you'd make me, by more than one good
year. Add twenty to twenty, and make money of that.
HARDCASTLE. Let me see; twenty added to twenty makes just fifty and
seven.
MRS. HARDCASTLE. It's false, Mr. Hardcastle; I was but twenty when I
was brought to bed of Tony, that I had by Mr. Lumpkin, my first
husband; and he's not come to years of discretion yet.
She Stoops to Conquer |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: That to the garden fair thou turnest not,
Which under the rays of Christ is blossoming?
There is the Rose in which the Word Divine
Became incarnate; there the lilies are
By whose perfume the good way was discovered."
Thus Beatrice; and I, who to her counsels
Was wholly ready, once again betook me
Unto the battle of the feeble brows.
As in the sunshine, that unsullied streams
Through fractured cloud, ere now a meadow of flowers
Mine eyes with shadow covered o'er have seen,
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
