| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from An Old Maid by Honore de Balzac: up by. Between eleven and four o'clock he walked about, went to read
the papers, and paid visits. From the time of his settling in Alencon
he had nobly admitted his poverty, saying that his whole fortune
consisted in an annuity of six hundred francs a year, the sole remains
of his former opulence,--a property which obliged him to see his man
of business (who held the annuity papers) quarterly. In truth, one of
the Alencon bankers paid him every three months one hundred and fifty
francs, sent down by Monsieur Bordin of Paris, the last of the
procureurs du Chatelet. Every one knew these details because the
chevalier exacted the utmost secrecy from the persons to whom he first
confided them.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: attains any vision of truth in company with a god is preserved from harm
until the next period, and if attaining always is always unharmed. But
when she is unable to follow, and fails to behold the truth, and through
some ill-hap sinks beneath the double load of forgetfulness and vice, and
her wings fall from her and she drops to the ground, then the law ordains
that this soul shall at her first birth pass, not into any other animal,
but only into man; and the soul which has seen most of truth shall come to
the birth as a philosopher, or artist, or some musical and loving nature;
that which has seen truth in the second degree shall be some righteous king
or warrior chief; the soul which is of the third class shall be a
politician, or economist, or trader; the fourth shall be a lover of
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And then we fall. And for all who have fallen --
Even for him -- I hold no malice,
Nor much compassion: a mightier mercy
Than mine must shrive him. -- And I -- I am going
Into the light? -- or into the darkness?
Why do I sit through these sickening hours,
And hope? Good God! are they hours? -- hours?
Yes! I am done with days. And to-morrow --
We two may meet! To-morrow! -- To-morrow! . . .
Walt Whitman
The master-songs are ended, and the man
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