| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: you?
Forty years of my life have I labored among you, and taught you,
Not in word alone, but in deed, to love one another!
Is this the fruit of my toils, of my vigils and prayers and
privations?
Have you so soon forgotten all lessons of love and forgiveness?
This is the house of the Prince of Peace, and would you profane
it
Thus with violent deeds and hearts overflowing with hatred?
Lo! where the crucified Christ from his cross is gazing upon you!
See! in those sorrowful eyes what meekness and holy compassion!
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: distinguished from a mere revival in no more striking
feature than in this, that while in the revival all is
excitement and fervour, the survival is carried on with
a stolidity and absence of stir which sets one wondering
why a thing that is done so perfunctorily should be kept
up at all. Like Balaam and other unwilling prophets,
the agents seem moved by an inner compulsion to say
and do their allotted parts whether they will or no.
This unweeting manner of performance is the true ring
by which, in this refurbishing age, a fossilized survival
may be known from a spurious reproduction.
Return of the Native |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer: the inert body of Inspector Weymouth. And I found time to compare
the strength of the little brown man with that of a Nile beetle,
which can raise many times its own weight. Then, behind him,
appeared a second figure, which immediately claimed the whole
of my errant attention.
"Fu-Manchu!" hissed my friend, from the darkness which concealed him.
It was indeed none other than Fu-Manchu--the Fu-Manchu whom we
had thought to be helpless. The deeps of the Chinaman's cunning--
the fine quality of his courage, were forced upon me as amazing facts.
He had assumed the appearance of a drugged opium-smoker so well
as to dupe me--a medical man; so well as to dupe Karamaneh--
The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu |
