| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: I cared. But Tyler would have it that she was Mary Fitton; and he
tracked Mary down from the first of her marriages in her teens to her
tomb in Cheshire, whither he made a pilgrimage and whence returned in
triumph with a picture of her statue, and the news that he was
convinced she was a dark lady by traces of paint still discernible.
In due course he published his edition of the Sonnets, with the
evidence he had collected. He lent me a copy of the book, which I
never returned. But I reviewed it in the Pall Mall Gazette on the 7th
of January 1886, and thereby let loose the Fitton theory in a wider
circle of readers than the book could reach. Then Tyler died, sinking
unnoted like a stone in the sea. I observed that Mr Acheson, Mrs
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Massimilla Doni by Honore de Balzac: "But what is that strange system that Capraja was eager to explain to
the Duke? Did you understand?"
"Yes," replied Vendramin. "Capraja's great friend is a musician from
Cremona, lodging in the Capello palace, who has a theory that sounds
meet with an element in man, analogous to that which produces ideas.
According to him, man has within him keys acted on by sound, and
corresponding to his nerve-centres, where ideas and sensations take
their rise. Capraja, who regards the arts as an assemblage of means by
which he can harmonize, in himself, all external nature with another
mysterious nature that he calls the inner life, shares all ideas of
this instrument-maker, who at this moment is composing an opera.
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: for her as her bridegroom, it was easy to pass through the tainted
air at noon, and climb the hill, and strew with kindly earth the
wretched naked corse that had no tomb. But what of those who wrote
about these things? What of those who gave them reality, and made
them live for ever? Are they not greater than the men and women
they sing of? 'Hector that sweet knight is dead,' and Lucian tells
us how in the dim under-world Menippus saw the bleaching skull of
Helen, and marvelled that it was for so grim a favour that all
those horned ships were launched, those beautiful mailed men laid
low, those towered cities brought to dust. Yet, every day the
swanlike daughter of Leda comes out on the battlements, and looks
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