| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: The waking stag had leapt across the rill
And roused the ouzel, or the lizard crept
Athwart the sunny rock, beneath the grass their bodies slept.
And when day brake, within that silver shrine
Fed by the flames of cressets tremulous,
Queen Venus knelt and prayed to Proserpine
That she whose beauty made Death amorous
Should beg a guerdon from her pallid Lord,
And let Desire pass across dread Charon's icy ford.
III
In melancholy moonless Acheron,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson: been so rudely used, and reflected with his finger to his nose. He
could only see one way of getting a lodging, and that was to take
it. He had noticed a house not far away, which looked as if it
might be easily broken into, and thither he betook himself
promptly, entertaining himself on the way with the idea of a room
still hot, with a table still loaded with the remains of supper,
where he might pass the rest of the black hours, and whence he
should issue, on the morrow, with an armful of valuable plate. He
even considered on what viands and what wines he should prefer; and
as he was calling the roll of his favourite dainties, roast fish
presented itself to his mind with an odd mixture of amusement and
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: to steady the nerves, to cool the fever, and appease the fret, if
one be sensibly conscious that, no matter what one's difficulties
for the moment may appear to be, one's life as a whole is in the
keeping of a power whom one can absolutely trust? In deeply
religious men the abandonment of self to this power is
passionate. Whoever not only says, but FEELS, "God's will be
done," is mailed against every weakness; and the whole historic
array of martyrs, missionaries, and religious reformers is there
to prove the tranquil-mindedness, under naturally agitating or
distressing circumstances, which self-surrender brings.
The temper of the tranquil-mindedness differs, of course,
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