| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: And silently sprinkled below in thin perennial rain.
Dark in the staring noon, dark was Rua's ravine,
Damp and cold was the air, and the face of the cliffs was green.
Here, in the rocky pit, accursed already of old,
On a stone in the midst of a river, Rua sat and was cold.
"Valley of mid-day shadows, valley of silent falls,
Rua sang, and his voice went hollow about the walls,
"Valley of shadow and rock, a doleful prison to me,
What is the life you can give to a child of the sun and the sea?"
And Rua arose and came to the open mouth of the glen,
Whence he beheld the woods, and the sea, and houses of men.
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: proof of perfect love. However it was, Mme. de Beauseant slowly turned
her face towards the doorway, and beheld her lover of bygone days.
Then Gaston de Nueil came forward a few paces.
"If you come any further, sir," exclaimed the Marquise, growing paler,
"I shall fling myself out of the window!"
She sprang to the window, flung it open, and stood with one foot on
the ledge, her hand upon the iron balustrade, her face turned towards
Gaston.
"Go out! go out!" she cried, "or I will throw myself over."
At that dreadful cry the servants began to stir, and M. de Nueil fled
like a criminal.
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: nor the criticism grows impassioned about the products of that bazaar.
Forced to make the selection for itself, which in former days the
examining jury made for it, the attention of the public is soon
wearied and the exhibition closes. Before the year 1817 the pictures
admitted never went beyond the first two columns of the long gallery
of the old masters; but in that year, to the great astonishment of the
public, they filled the whole space. Historical, high-art, genre
paintings, easel pictures, landscapes, flowers, animals, and water-
colors,--these eight specialties could surely not offer more than
twenty pictures in one year worthy of the eyes of the public, which,
indeed, cannot give its attention to a greater number of such works.
|
