| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bunner Sisters by Edith Wharton: apple trees stood a yellow summer-house festooned with scarlet
runners; and below it, on the farther side of a rough fence, the
land dipped down, holding a bit of woodland in its hollow. It was
all strangely sweet and still on that hot Sunday afternoon, and as
she moved across the grass under the apple-boughs Ann Eliza thought
of quiet afternoons in church, and of the hymns her mother had sung
to her when she was a baby.
Evelina was more restless. She wandered from the well to the
summer-house and back, she tossed crumbs to the chickens and
disturbed the cat with arch caresses; and at last she expressed a
desire to go down into the wood.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Rescue by Joseph Conrad: house which was the quarter of the prisoners, might have been
called a blaze and even that was not a great one. It didn't
penetrate the dark space between the piles and the depth of the
verandah above where only a couple of heads and the glint of a
spearhead could be seen dimly in the play of the light. But down
on the ground outside, the black shape of a man seated on a bench
had an intense relief. Another intensely black shadow threw a
handful of brushwood on the fire and went away. The man on the
bench got up. It was d'Alcacer. He let Lingard and Mrs. Travers
come quite close up to him. Extreme surprise seemed to have made
him dumb.
The Rescue |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ion by Plato: embellishments of Homer, in which he declares himself to have surpassed
Metrodorus of Lampsacus and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, seems to show that,
like them, he belonged to the allegorical school of interpreters. The
circumstance that nothing more is known of him may be adduced in
confirmation of the argument that this truly Platonic little work is not a
forgery of later times.
ION
by
Plato
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
PERSONS OF THE DIALOGUE: Socrates, Ion.
|
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 The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: us? Simnel? I do much question it. The Walsinghams? Nay, they
are not yet so broken; they still think to have the law over us,
when times change. There was Simon Malmesbury, too. How think ye,
Bennet?"
"What think ye, sir," returned Hatch, "of Ellis Duckworth?"
"Nay, Bennet, never. Nay, not he," said the priest. "There cometh
never any rising, Bennet, from below - so all judicious chroniclers
concord in their opinion; but rebellion travelleth ever downward
from above; and when Dick, Tom, and Harry take them to their bills,
look ever narrowly to see what lord is profited thereby. Now, Sir
Daniel, having once more joined him to the Queen's party, is in ill
|
