| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: with thoughts of sadness and compassion in a melancholy splendour
meditating upon the short-lived peace of the waters. And I have
seen him put the pent-up anger of his heart into the aspect of the
inaccessible sun, and cause it to glare fiercely like the eye of an
implacable autocrat out of a pale and frightened sky.
He is the war-lord who sends his battalions of Atlantic rollers to
the assault of our seaboard. The compelling voice of the West Wind
musters up to his service all the might of the ocean. At the
bidding of the West Wind there arises a great commotion in the sky
above these Islands, and a great rush of waters falls upon our
shores. The sky of the westerly weather is full of flying clouds,
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: or inferiors. He reined up his horse on the top of a gentle
eminence, from which he observed the busy and gay scene beneath
him, and heard the whoops of the huntsmen, gaily mingled with the
cry of the dogs, and the neighing and trampling of the horses.
But these jovial sounds fell sadly on the ear of the ruined
nobleman. The chase, with all its train of excitations, has ever
since feudal times been accounted the almost exclusive privilege
of the aristocracy, and was anciently their chief employment in
times of peace. The sense that he was excluded by his situation
from emjoying the silvan sport, which his rank assigned to him as
a special prerogative, and the feeling that new men were now
The Bride of Lammermoor |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: A true-love ballad, lightly rode away.
Thence to the court he past; there told the King
What the King knew, 'Sir Lancelot is the knight.'
And added, 'Sire, my liege, so much I learnt;
But failed to find him, though I rode all round
The region: but I lighted on the maid
Whose sleeve he wore; she loves him; and to her,
Deeming our courtesy is the truest law,
I gave the diamond: she will render it;
For by mine head she knows his hiding-place.'
The seldom-frowning King frowned, and replied,
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