| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: bearings of their houses emblazoned on their golden robes. The dance
of the mitred arcades with the slender windows became like a fray at a
tourney.
In another moment every stone in the church vibrated, without leaving
its place; for the organ-pipes spoke, and I heard divine music
mingling with the songs of angels, and unearthly harmony, accompanied
by the deep notes of the bells, that boomed as the giant towers rocked
and swayed on their square bases. This strange Sabbath seemed to me
the most natural thing in the world; and I, who had seen Charles X.
hurled from his throne, was no longer amazed by anything. Nay, I
myself was gently swaying with a see-saw movement that influenced my
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: rock.
`Here's a leg for a babe of a week!' says doctor; and
he would be bound,
There was not his like that year in twenty parishes
round.
IV.
Strong of his hands, and strong on his legs, but still of
his tongue!
I ought to have gone before him: I wonder he went
so young.
I cannot cry for him, Annie: I have not long to
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: sick when they saw the queen's conduct; and then ask Mr Harris whether
any woman could have stood it for long, or have thought the "sugred"
compliment worth the cruel wounds, the cleaving of the heart in twain,
that seemed to Shakespear as natural and amusing a reaction as the
burlesquing of his heroics by Pistol, his sermons by Falstaff, and his
poems by Cloten and Touchstone.
Jupiter and Semele
This does not mean that Shakespear was cruel: evidently he was not;
but it was not cruelty that made Jupiter reduce Semele to ashes: it
was the fact that he could not help being a god nor she help being a
mortal. The one thing Shakespear's passion for the Dark Lady was not,
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