The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Oaks crash down in the darkness,
We run from our windy shadows; we are running alone.
* * * * *
The moon was darkened: across it flew
The swift grey tenebrous shape he knew,
Like a thing of smoke it crossed the sky,
The witch! he said. And he heard a cry,
And another came, and another came,
And one, grown duskily red with blood,
Floated an instant across the moon,
Hung like a dull fantastic flame . . .
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Child of Storm by H. Rider Haggard: present. The Tugela is not far away, and we will swim it. Come on,
before our hurts grow stiff."
So we went on, till presently we reached the crest of a rise of ground
overlooking the river, and there saw and heard dreadful things, for
beneath us those devilish Usutu were massacring the fugitives and the
camp-followers. These were being driven by the hundred to the edge of
the water, there to perish on the banks or in the stream, which was
black with drowned or drowning forms.
And oh! the sounds! Well, these I will not attempt to describe.
"Keep up stream," I said shortly, and we struggled across a kind of
donga, where only a few wounded men were hidden, into a somewhat denser
 Child of Storm |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from In the South Seas by Robert Louis Stevenson: seems there was but one penalty, the capital; and daylight assault
and midnight murder were the forms of process. The king himself
would play the executioner: and his blows were dealt by stealth,
and with the help and countenance of none but his own wives. These
were his oarswomen; one that caught a crab, he slew incontinently
with the tiller; thus disciplined, they pulled him by night to the
scene of his vengeance, which he would then execute alone and
return well-pleased with his connubial crew. The inmates of the
harem held a station hard for us to conceive. Beasts of draught,
and driven by the fear of death, they were yet implicitly trusted
with their sovereign's life; they were still wives and queens, and
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