| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Message by Honore de Balzac: Young as we both were, we still admired "the woman of a certain
age," that is to say, the woman between thirty-five and forty.
Oh! any poet who should have listened to our talk, for heaven
knows how many stages beyond Montargis, would have reaped a
harvest of flaming epithet, rapturous description, and very
tender confidences. Our bashful fears, our silent interjections,
our blushes, as we met each other's eyes, were expressive with an
eloquence, a boyish charm, which I have ceased to feel. One must
remain young, no doubt, to understand youth.
Well, we understood one another to admiration on all the
essential points of passion. We had laid it down as an axiom at
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Menexenus by Plato: barbarians, depriving her of the ships which had once been their salvation,
and dismantling our walls, which had preserved their own from falling. She
thought that she would no longer defend the Hellenes, when enslaved either
by one another or by the barbarians, and did accordingly. This was our
feeling, while the Lacedaemonians were thinking that we who were the
champions of liberty had fallen, and that their business was to subject the
remaining Hellenes. And why should I say more? for the events of which I
am speaking happened not long ago and we can all of us remember how the
chief peoples of Hellas, Argives and Boeotians and Corinthians, came to
feel the need of us, and, what is the greatest miracle of all, the Persian
king himself was driven to such extremity as to come round to the opinion,
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: But they knew that it was modern.
Upon the glazen shelves kept watch
Matthew and Waldo, guardians of the faith,
The army of unalterable law."
Mr. Apollinax
When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees,
And of Priapus in the shrubbery
Gaping at the lady in the swing.
Prufrock/Other Observations |
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 Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: of a perfectly still and glassy bay. Ten yards farther, the
cataract fell sheer in thunder: but a high fern-fringed rock turned
its force away from that quiet nook. In it the water swung slowly
round and round in glassy dark-green rings, among which dimpled a
hundred gaudy fish, waiting for every fly and worm which spun and
quivered on the eddy. Here, if anywhere, was the place to find the
owner of the canoe. He leapt down upon the pebbles; and as he did
so, a figure rose from behind a neighboring rock, and met him face
to face.
It was an Indian girl; and yet, when he looked again,--was it an
Indian girl? Amyas had seen hundreds of those delicate dark-
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