| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: Bell Rock beacon took a "thrawe," and his workmen fled into the
tower, then nearly finished, and he sat unmoved reading in his
Bible - or affecting to read - till one after another slunk back
with confusion of countenance to their engineer. Yes, parts of me
have seen life, and met adventures, and sometimes met them well.
And away in the still cloudier past, the threads that make me up
can be traced by fancy into the bosoms of thousands and millions of
ascendants: Picts who rallied round Macbeth and the old (and highly
preferable) system of descent by females, fleers from before the
legions of Agricola, marchers in Pannonian morasses, star-gazers on
Chaldaean plateaus; and, furthest of all, what face is this that
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin: which are best seen in the non-stratified masses. I may observe,
that in the case of the frozen snow, the columnar structure must
be owing to a "metamorphic" action, and not to a process during
deposition.
[5] This is merely an illustration of the admirable laws, first
laid down by Mr. Lyell, on the geographical distribution of
animals, as influenced by geological changes. The whole
reasoning, of course, is founded on the assumption of the
immutability of species; otherwise the difference in the species
in the two regions might be considered as superinduced during a
length of time.
The Voyage of the Beagle |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Luring our gaze far ahead into paths now first open'd before us.
"O how joyful the time, when with his bride the glad bridegroom
Whirls in the dance, awaiting the day that will join them for ever
But more glorious far was the time when the Highest of all things
Which man's mind can conceive, close by and attainable seemed.
Then were the tongues of all loosen'd, and words of wisdom and feeling
Not by greybeards alone, but by men and by striplings were utter'd.
"But the heavens soon clouded became. For the sake of the mast'ry
Strove a contemptible crew, unfit to accomplish good actions.
Then they murder'd each other, and took to oppressing their new-found
Neighbours and brothers, and sent on missions whole herds of selfÄseekers
|
