| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice.
Come forth worm and the silent valley, to thy pensive queen.
The helpless worm arose and sat upon the Lillys leaf,
And the bright Cloud saild on, to find his partner in the vale.
III.
Then Thel astonish'd view'd the Worm upon its dewy bed.
Art thou a Worm? image of weakness. art thou but a Worm?
I see thee like an infant wrapped in the Lillys leaf;
Ah weep not little voice, thou can'st not speak, but thou can'st weep:
Is this a Worm? I see they lay helpless & naked: weeping
And none to answer, none to cherish thee with mothers smiles.
Poems of William Blake |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: The old man seized the arm of the young man violently, and said to
him, "You see nothing?--clown, infidel, scoundrel, dolt! Why did you
come here? My good Porbus," he added, turning to his friend, "is it
possible that you, too, are jesting with me? Answer; I am your friend.
Tell me, can it be that I have spoiled my picture?"
Porbus hesitated, and feared to speak; but the anxiety painted on the
white face of the old man was so cruel that he was constrained to
point to the canvas and utter the word, "See!"
Frenhofer looked at his picture for a space of a moment, and
staggered.
"Nothing! nothing! after toiling ten years!"
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Melmoth Reconciled by Honore de Balzac: physical exertion is succeeded by times of inertia, when they repair
the waste. They fight and drink, fight and eat, fight and sleep, that
they may the better deal hard blows; the powers of the mind are not
greatly exercised in this turbulent round of existence, and the
character is as simple as heretofore.
When the men who have shown such energy on the battlefield return to
ordinary civilization, most of those who have not risen to high rank
seem to have acquired no ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity,
for grasping new ideas. To the utter amazement of a younger
generation, those who made our armies so glorious and so terrible are
as simple as children, and as slow-witted as a clerk at his worst,
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