| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: but in him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of
the sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity
of longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on
outspread wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to
other spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and
hopeless knowledge. His soul dried up within him, for he hungered and
thirsted after things that can neither be drunk nor eaten, but for
which he could not choose but crave. His lips, like Melmoth's, burned
with desire; he panted for the unknown, for he knew all things.
The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent to him, and its
working interested him no longer; he did not long disguise the
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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: Thomas Hood
The man who cloaked his bitterness within
This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries,
God never gave to look with common eyes
Upon a world of anguish and of sin:
His brother was the branded man of Lynn;
And there are woven with his jollities
The nameless and eternal tragedies
That render hope and hopelessness akin.
We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel
A still chord sorrow-swept, -- a weird unrest;
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: Also were there fishing-tackle and guns in reckless profusion.
The fisherman, in the kitchen of the mud-chimney, was
sardonically waging war with a basket of little bayou crabs.
"Entrez, mademoiselle et monsieur," he said pleasantly, grabbing
a vicious crab by its flippers, and smiling at its wild attempts
to bite. "You see I am busy, but make yourself at home."
"Well, how on earth--" began Philip.
"Sh--sh--" whispered Annette. "I was driving out in the woods
this morning, and stumbled on the hut. He asked me in, but I came
right over after you."
The fisherman, having succeeded in getting the last crab in the
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
