| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: choose our day and select our hour. We can say to ourselves, 'To-
morrow, at dawn, we shall walk with grave Virgil through the valley
of the shadow of death,' and lo! the dawn finds us in the obscure
wood, and the Mantuan stands by our side. We pass through the gate
of the legend fatal to hope, and with pity or with joy behold the
horror of another world. The hypocrites go by, with their painted
faces and their cowls of gilded lead. Out of the ceaseless winds
that drive them, the carnal look at us, and we watch the heretic
rending his flesh, and the glutton lashed by the rain. We break
the withered branches from the tree in the grove of the Harpies,
and each dull-hued poisonous twig bleeds with red blood before us,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: By any kind of Sprite;
Yet still they echo in my head,
Those parting words, so kindly said,
"Old Turnip-top, good-night!"
ECHOES
LADY Clara Vere de Vere
Was eight years old, she said:
Every ringlet, lightly shaken, ran itself in golden thread.
She took her little porringer:
Of me she shall not win renown:
For the baseness of its nature shall have strength to drag her
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: behindhand in these sort of considerations? Do you suppose she
does not often say all this to herself? No, Emma, your amiable
young man can be amiable only in French, not in English. He may be
very `aimable,' have very good manners, and be very agreeable; but he
can have no English delicacy towards the feelings of other people:
nothing really amiable about him."
"You seem determined to think ill of him."
"Me!--not at all," replied Mr. Knightley, rather displeased; "I do
not want to think ill of him. I should be as ready to acknowledge
his merits as any other man; but I hear of none, except what are
merely personal; that he is well-grown and good-looking, with smooth,
Emma |
