| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: So swift, so searching, and so eloquent
Of upward promise, that love's murmur, blent
With sorrow's warning, gave but a supreme
Unending impulse to that human stream
Whose flood was all for the flame's fury bent.
Alas! I said, -- the world is in the wrong.
But the same quenchless fever of unrest
That thrilled the foremost of that martyred throng
Thrilled me, and I awoke . . . and was the same
Bewildered insect plunging for the flame
That burns, and must burn somehow for the best.
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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: confiding nature, that he was always ready to believe in whatever
seemed beautiful and good. He kept his heart continually open,
and thus was sure to catch the blessing from on high when it
should come. So now again, as buoyantly as ever, he went forth to
behold the likeness of the Great Stone Face.
The cavalcade came prancing along the road, with a great
clattering of hoofs and a mighty cloud of dust, which rose up so
dense and high that the visage of the mountain-side was
completely hidden from Ernest's eyes. All the great men of the
neighborhood were there on horseback; militia officers, in
uniform; the member of Congress; the sheriff of the county; the
The Snow Image |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: having appeared on the field of battle with a sword in one hand and a
milk-bottle in the other. The art editor, Roncesvalles Sykes, was a
third cousin to a nephew of Jefferson Davis. Miss Lavinia Terhune,
the colonel's stenographer and typewriter, had an aunt who had once
been kissed by Stonewall Jackson. Tommy Webster, the head office-boy,
got his job by having recited Father Ryan's poems, complete, at the
commencement exercises of the Toombs City High School. The girls who
wrapped and addressed the magazines were members of old Southern
families in Reduced Circumstances. The cashier was a scrub named
Hawkins, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who had recommendations and a bond
from a guarantee company filed with the owners. Even Georgia stock
Options |
