| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: Of flowers, that from those hands angelic rose,
And down, within and outside of the car,
Fell showering, in white veil with olive wreath'd,
A virgin in my view appear'd, beneath
Green mantle, rob'd in hue of living flame:
And o'er my Spirit, that in former days
Within her presence had abode so long,
No shudd'ring terror crept. Mine eyes no more
Had knowledge of her; yet there mov'd from her
A hidden virtue, at whose touch awak'd,
The power of ancient love was strong within me.
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Frances Waldeaux by Rebecca Davis: be unfit for a gentleman to read?
She was looking out to sea and thinking of this when her
cousin, Miss Vance, came up to her. Miss Vance was a
fashionable teacher in New York, who was going to spend
a year abroad with two wealthy pupils. She was a thin
woman, quietly dressed; white hair and black brows, with
gold eye-glasses bridging an aquiline nose, gave her a
commanding, inquisitorial air.
"Well, Frances!" she began briskly, "I have not had time
before to attend to you. Are your bags hung in your
stateroom?"
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Arrow of Gold by Joseph Conrad: promising to be back on the fourth day and leaving all further
arrangements to his friend. He prided himself on his
impenetrability before Dona Rita; on the happiness without a shadow
of those four days. However, Dona Rita must have had the intuition
of there being something in the wind, because on the evening of the
very same day on which he left her again on some pretence or other,
she was already ensconced in the house in the street of the
Consuls, with the trustworthy Rose scouting all over the town to
gain information.
Of the proceedings in the walled garden there is no need to speak
in detail. They were conventionally correct, but an earnestness of
The Arrow of Gold |
