| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And fly on farther for another breakfast?"
"But why forget the fortune of the worm,"
I said, "if in the dryness you deplore
Salvation centred and endured? Your Norcross
May have been one for many to have envied."
"Salvation? Fortune? Would the worm say that?
He might; and therefore I dismiss the worm
With all dry things but one. Figures away,
Do you begin to see this man a little?
Do you begin to see him in the air,
With all the vacant horrors of his outline
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare: When by the law you had deserved death,
And then you promised me upon your oaths,
To venture both your lives to do me good.
BOTH WITNESSES.
We swore no more than that we will perform.
GARDINER.
I take your words; and that which you must do
Is service for your God, and for your King:
To root a rebel from this flourishing land,
One that's an enemy unto the Church:
And therefore must you take your solemn oaths,
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Little Rivers by Henry van Dyke: like this, in the security of a dead language, and to intrench it
behind a fortress of reputable authority. But in lowlier and less
dangerous matters, such as we are now concerned with, one may dare
to speak in plain English. I am all for the little rivers. Let
those who will, chant in heroic verse the renown of Amazon and
Mississippi and Niagara, but my prose shall flow--or straggle along
at such a pace as the prosaic muse may grant me to attain--in
praise of Beaverkill and Neversink and Swiftwater, of Saranac and
Raquette and Ausable, of Allegash and Aroostook and Moose River.
"Whene'er I take my walks abroad," it shall be to trace the clear
Rauma from its rise on the fjeld to its rest in the fjord; or to
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