| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: The helpless worm arose and sat upon the Lillys leaf,
And the bright Cloud saild on, to find his partner in the vale.
III.
Then Thel astonish'd view'd the Worm upon its dewy bed.
Art thou a Worm? image of weakness. art thou but a Worm?
I see thee like an infant wrapped in the Lillys leaf;
Ah weep not little voice, thou can'st not speak, but thou can'st weep:
Is this a Worm? I see they lay helpless & naked: weeping
And none to answer, none to cherish thee with mothers smiles.
The Clod of Clay heard the Worms voice & rais'd her pitying head:
She bowd over the weeping infant, and her life exhald
Poems of William Blake |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: copper-gilt. This relic, picked up by Gigonnet after the pillage of
Versailles, where the populace broke nearly everything, came from the
queen's boudoir; but these rare vases were flanked by two candelabra
of abject shape made of wrought-iron, and the barbarous contrast
recalled the circumstances under which the vases had been acquired.
"I know that you have not come on your own account," said Gigonnet,
"but on behalf of the great Birotteau. Well, what is it, my friends?"
"We can tell you nothing that you do not already know; so I will be
brief," said Pillerault. "You have notes to the order of Claparon?"
"Yes."
"Will you exchange the first fifty thousand of those notes against the
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: produce the same result, then it seems to me to be useful; if not, not.
SOCRATES: Then if without the aid of fire we could make a brazen statue,
we should not want fire for that purpose; and if we did not want it, it
would be useless to us? And the argument applies equally in other cases.
ERYXIAS: Clearly.
SOCRATES: And therefore conditions which are not required for the
existence of a thing are not useful for the production of it?
ERYXIAS: Of course not.
SOCRATES: And if without gold or silver or anything else which we do not
use directly for the body in the way that we do food and drink and bedding
and houses,--if without these we could satisfy the wants of the body, they
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