| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Fitter for Truth to be seen abroad in;
"If Truth were not so strange in her nakedness,
And we were less forbidden to look at it,
We might not have to look." He stared then
Down at the sand where the tide threw forward
Its cold, unconquered lines, that unceasingly
Foamed against hope, and fell. He was calm enough,
Although he knew he might be silenced
Out of all calm; and the night was coming.
"I climb for you the peak of his infamy
That you may choose your fall if you cling to it.
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: hand, "thee must sit farther off, on that other stone, with the
spring between us. What would the sisters say, if thee were to
sit so close to me?"
"But we are of the world's people now, Miriam," answered Josiah.
The girl persisted in her prudery, nor did the youth, in fact,
seem altogether free from a similar sort of shyness; so they sat
apart from each other, gazing up the hill, where the moonlight
discovered the tops of a group of buildings. While their
attention was thus occupied, a party of travellers, who had come
wearily up the long ascent, made a halt to refresh themselves at
the spring. There were three men, a woman, and a little girl and
The Snow Image |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad: very indistinct; and a voice spoke: "All here, sir."
Another amended anxiously:
"All that are any good for anything, sir."
Both voices were very quiet and unringing; with-
out any special character of readiness or discour-
agement. Very matter-of-fact voices.
"We must try to haul this mainsail close up," I said.
The shadows swayed away from me without a
word. Those men were the ghosts of themselves,
and their weight on a rope could be no more than
the weight of a bunch of ghosts. Indeed, if ever a
The Shadow Line |
