| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: MENALCAS
First this frail hemlock-stalk to you I give,
Which taught me "Corydon with love was fired
For fair Alexis," ay, and this beside,
"Who owns the flock?- Meliboeus?"
MOPSUS
But take you
This shepherd's crook, which, howso hard he begged,
Antigenes, then worthy to be loved,
Prevailed not to obtain- with brass, you see,
And equal knots, Menalcas, fashioned fair!
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: own sake."
"Which part should I keep back?"
Wildeve paused. "That I was in the house at the time,"
he said in a low tone.
"Yes; it must be concealed, seeing what has been whispered.
How much easier are hasty actions than speeches that will
excuse them!"
"If he were only to die--" Wildeve murmured.
"Do not think of it! I would not buy hope of immunity
by so cowardly a desire even if I hated him. Now I am
going up to him again. Thomasin bade me tell you she
Return of the Native |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: echo had ended by growing more distinct than the sound. The sound
now rang out, the type blazed at him with all its fires and with a
mystery of radiance in which endless meanings could glow. The
thing became as he sat there his appropriate altar and each starry
candle an appropriate vow. He numbered them, named them, grouped
them - it was the silent roll-call of his Dead. They made together
a brightness vast and intense, a brightness in which the mere
chapel of his thoughts grew so dim that as it faded away he asked
himself if he shouldn't find his real comfort in some material act,
some outward worship.
This idea took possession of him while, at a distance, the black-
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