The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: So I piped: he wept to hear.
'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!'
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
'Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book, that all may read.'
So he vanished from my sight;
And I plucked a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stained the water clear,
 Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Second Home by Honore de Balzac: he had the gift of reading hearts, or much practice in it, and his
presence must surely be as icy as the air of this dank street. Was the
dull, sallow complexion of that ominous face due to excess of work, or
the result of delicate health?
The old woman supplied twenty different answers to this question; but
Caroline, next day, discerned the lines of long mental suffering on
that brow that was so prompt to frown. The rather hollow cheeks of the
Unknown bore the stamp of the seal which sorrow sets on its victims as
if to grant them the consolation of common recognition and brotherly
union for resistance. Though the girl's expression was at first one of
lively but innocent curiosity, it assumed a look of gentle sympathy as
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: its own father, and most prolific in self-propagation. The lady did,
it is true, once signalize her displeasure against our little brother,
for reprimanding her in that she would go hunting a-mornings instead
of attending matins. She cut short the thread of his eloquence by
sportively drawing her bow-string and loosing an arrow over his head;
he waddled off with singular speed, and was in much awe of her for
many months. I thought he had forgotten it: but let that pass.
In truth, she would have had little of her lover's company, if she had
liked the chaunt of the choristers better than the cry of the hounds:
yet I know not; for they were companions from the cradle, and reciprocally
fashioned each other to the love of the fern and the foxglove.
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