Select the correct text in the passage.
Which of the following two details, one from each text, support a similar theme about the past?

Passage 1

from The Sower
by James Russell Lowell

I saw a Sower walking slow
Across the earth, from east to west;
His hair was white as mountain snow.
His head drooped forward on his breast.


With shriveled hands he flung his seed,
Nor ever turned to look behind;
Of sight or sound he took no heed;
It seemed he was both deaf and blind.


His dim face showed no soul beneath,
Yet in my heart I felt a stir,
As if I looked upon the sheath
That once had held Excalibur.1


I heard, as still the seed he cast,
How, crooning to himself he sung.
'I sow again the holy Past,
The happy days when I was young.


'Then all was wheat without a tare2,
Then all was righteous, fair, and true;
And I am he whose thoughtful care
Shall plant the Old World in the New.