| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: This says, just such an involuted beauty
Of thought and coiling thought, dream linked with dream,
Image to image gliding, wreathing fires,
Soundlessly cries enchantment in your mind:
You need but sit and close your eyes a moment
To see these deep designs unfold themselves.
And so, all things discern me, name me, praise me--
I walk in a world of silent voices, praising;
And in this world you see me like a wraith
Blown softly here and there, on silent winds.
'Praise me'--I say; and look, not in a glass,
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: but found nothing except two chalices, and some relics of so little
value that we redeemed them for six sequins. As I had given them my
chalice upon their first demand, they did not search me, but gave us
to understand that they expected to find something of greater value,
which either we must have hidden or the Abyssins must have imposed
on them. They left us the rest of the day at a gentleman's house,
who was our friend, from whence the next day they fetched us to
transport us to the island, where they put us into a kind of prison,
with a view of terrifying us into a confession of the place where we
had hid our gold, in which, however, they found themselves deceived.
But I had here another affair upon my hands which was near costing
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott: It may be easily believed that this ill-timed anecdote hastened
the Master's purpose of quitting a company so evil-omened and so
odious. Yet, while walking to the tree to which his horse was
tied, and busying himself with adjusting the girhts of the
saddle, he could not avoid hearing, through the hedge of the
little garden, a conversation respecting himself, betwixt the
lame woman and the octagenarian sibyl. The pair had hobbled into
the garden to gather rosemary, southernwood, rue, and other
plants proper to be strewed upon the body, and burned by way of
fumigation in the chimney of the cottage. The paralytic wretch,
almost exhausted by the journey, was left guard upon the corpse,
The Bride of Lammermoor |
