| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: Normans. Passing over into Africa, I traversed at my ease that
immense desert, yellow and tranquil, in which camels, gazelles,
and Arab vagabonds roam about--where, in the rare and transparent
atmosphere, there hover no vague hauntings, where there is never
any night, but always day.
I returned to France by Marseilles, and in spite of all its
Provencal gaiety, the diminished clearness of the sky made me
sad. I experienced, in returning to the Continent, the peculiar
sensation of an illness which I believed had been cured, and a
dull pain which predicted that the seeds of the disease had not
been eradicated.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: his mother had lived and did not live? She had been in one place,
and was in another; that was all. And his soul could not leave her,
wherever she was. Now she was gone abroad into the night, and he
was with her still. They were together. But yet there was his body,
his chest, that leaned against the stile, his hands on the wooden bar.
They seemed something. Where was he?--one tiny upright speck of flesh,
less than an ear of wheat lost in the field. He could not bear it.
On every side the immense dark silence seemed pressing him, so tiny
a spark, into extinction, and yet, almost nothing, he could not
be extinct. Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out,
beyond stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spinning
Sons and Lovers |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Out flashed the cutlass, down went Ben
Dead and rotten, there and then.
Poem: II - THE BUILDER'S DOOM
In eighteen-twenty Deacon Thin
Feu'd the land and fenced it in,
And laid his broad foundations down
About a furlong out of town.
Early and late the work went on.
The carts were toiling ere the dawn;
The mason whistled, the hodman sang;
Early and late the trowels rang;
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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 Agesilaus by Xenophon: hymn.[3] Far rather let it be named a hymn of praise, since in the
first place it is only the repetition, now that he is dead, of a tale
familiar to his ears when living. And in the next place, what is more
remote from dirge and lamentation than a life of glory crowned by
seasonable death? What more deserving of song and eulogy than
resplendent victories and deeds of highest note? Surely if one man
rather than another may be accounted truly blest, it is he who, from
his boyhood upwards, thirsted for glory, and beyond all contemporary
names won what he desired; who, being gifted with a nature most
emulous of honour, remained from the moment he was king unconquered;
who attained the fullest term of mortal life and died without
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