| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: Had not the music of our joy
Sounded its highest note?
But no,
RIVERS TO THE SEA
For suddenly, with lifted eyes you said,
"Oh look!"
There, on the black bough of a snow flecked maple,
Fearless and gay as our love,
A bluejay cocked his crest!
Oh who can tell the range of joy
Or set the bounds of beauty?
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: There's nothing strange in what I shall tell you,
Nothing mysterious, nothing unearthly, --
But damnably human, -- and you shall hear it.
Not one of those little black lawyers had guessed it;
The judge, with his big bald head, never knew it;
And the jury (God rest their poor souls!) never dreamed it.
Once there were three in the world who could tell it;
Now there are two. There'll be two to-morrow, --
You, my friend, and -- But there's the story: --
When I was a boy the world was heaven.
I never knew then that the men and the women
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: perspicacity rare at that age, to analyze the husband and wife
whose solitude was about to be so rudely disturbed.
The husband seemed to be a specimen of a certain type of
nobleman, the fairest ornaments of the provinces of our day. He
wore big shoes with stout soles to them. I put the shoes first
advisedly, for they made an even deeper impression upon me than a
seedy black coat, a pair of threadbare trousers, a flabby cravat,
or a crumpled shirt collar. There was a touch of the magistrate
in the man, a good deal more of the Councillor of the Prefecture,
all the self-importance of the mayor of the arrondissement, the
local autocrat, and the soured temper of the unsuccessful
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