Literary Excerpts for MOOD

1. What was my most terrifying experience? Well, one does have a few after thirty-five years of
working at lighthouses….The rock on which the lighthouse stood was known as Three Skeleton Key. The
place earned its name and its bad reputation from the story of three convicts who excepted from a jail in
a stolen canoe. The canoe was wrecked on the rock during the night, and though the convicts managed
to escape from the raging sea, they eventually died of hunger and thirst. When they were finally
discovered on the rock, nothing remained but three heaps of bones picked clean by the birds. According
to the tale, three skeletons, gleaming with light, danced over the rock, screaming….
Picture the lighthouse—a tall gray cylinder welded to the solid rock by iron rods. Picture it rising
into the air, twenty miles from land. Yes, this rock was actually an island in the midst of the sea, an
island of rock….But you had to be very careful when you walked about, for the stones on this island were
extremely slippery. One misstep and you could fall into the sea. Not that the risk of drowning was so
great—but the waters around the island swarmed with sharks.

-- from “Three Skeleton Key” by George G. Toudouze

2. Whose woods these are I think I know. / his house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here / To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer / To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake / The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake / To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep / of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep, / But I have promises to keep.
And miles to go before I sleep, / And miles to go before I sleep.

-- from “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost

3. Between my eye and heart an agreement is made / my eye is hungry to look at you again
my heart is in love with the sound of your voice
I look upon your picture, and my eyes cannot take themselves off it
you are always with me, whether in a picture or in my heart
for you can move no farther than my thoughts
I am always with you / you awaken my heart to the delight of love.

-- adapted from William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 47

4. O, how I lose strength when I write about you / knowing that someone else also writes about you
and in praising you, he spends all of his energy
to make me tongue-tied when I try to write tell about your beauty
my words are not as powerful as his / and so I am a wrecked boat and worthless poet
he is a tall building and overshadows me
if you choose him, I will be thrown away like a cast-away
and the awful truth is that my love for you will have been wasted
-- adapted from William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 80