| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: But my eyes were suddenly afraid.
Summer Night, Riverside
In the wild, soft summer darkness
How many and many a night we two together
Sat in the park and watched the Hudson
Wearing her lights like golden spangles
Glinting on black satin.
The rail along the curving pathway
Was low in a happy place to let us cross,
And down the hill a tree that dripped with bloom
Sheltered us,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: will think that I am bad. I didn't do it! I didn't do it!
I've been a silly little fool; but I have never been a bad
girl--and---and--I had nothing to do with that awful
thing that happened to-night."
Bridge and the boy realized that she was not talking
to them--that for the moment she had lost sight of their
presence--she was talking to that father whose heart
would be breaking with the breaking of the new day,
trying to convince him that his little girl had done no
wrong.
Again she sat up, and when she spoke there was no
The Oakdale Affair |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Silas Marner by George Eliot: Dunsey must have walked off. I daresay we shall see him again
by-and-by. I don't know where he is."
"And what must you be letting him have my money for? Answer me
that," said the Squire, attacking Godfrey again, since Dunsey was
not within reach.
"Well, sir, I don't know," said Godfrey, hesitatingly. That was a
feeble evasion, but Godfrey was not fond of lying, and, not being
sufficiently aware that no sort of duplicity can long flourish
without the help of vocal falsehoods, he was quite unprepared with
invented motives.
"You don't know? I tell you what it is, sir. You've been up to
Silas Marner |
The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from Almayer's Folly by Joseph Conrad: "It is time for Babalatchi to be here," he said. "The night is
more than half gone. Our road is long, and a bullet travels
quicker than the best canoe."
"He will be here before the moon is hidden behind the clouds,"
said Nina. "I heard a splash in the water," she added. "Did you
hear it too?"
"Alligator," answered Dain shortly, with a careless glance
towards the creek. "The darker the night," he continued, "the
shorter will be our road, for then we could keep in the current
of the main stream, but if it is light--even no more than now--we
must follow the small channels of sleeping water, with nothing to
Almayer's Folly |
