| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Emma by Jane Austen: "How much I am obliged to you," said he, "for telling me to come to-day!--
If it had not been for you, I should certainly have lost all the
happiness of this party. I had quite determined to go away again."
"Yes, you were very cross; and I do not know what about,
except that you were too late for the best strawberries.
I was a kinder friend than you deserved. But you were humble.
You begged hard to be commanded to come."
"Don't say I was cross. I was fatigued. The heat overcame me."
"It is hotter to-day."
"Not to my feelings. I am perfectly comfortable to-day."
"You are comfortable because you are under command."
Emma |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: Two maxims she could still produce,
And sad experience taught her use;
That virtue, pleased by being shown,
Knows nothing which it dare not own;
Can make us without fear disclose
Our inmost secrets to our foes;
That common forms were not designed
Directors to a noble mind.
Now, said the nymph, I'll let you see
My actions with your rules agree,
That I can vulgar forms despise,
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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 The Iliad by Homer: youths move in a dark mass to battle under the Ajaxes, horrid
with shield and spear. Glad was King Agamemnon when he saw them.
"No need," he cried, "to give orders to such leaders of the
Argives as you are, for of your own selves you spur your men on
to fight with might and main. Would, by father Jove, Minerva, and
Apollo that all were so minded as you are, for the city of Priam
would then soon fall beneath our hands, and we should sack it."
With this he left them and went onward to Nestor, the facile
speaker of the Pylians, who was marshalling his men and urging
them on, in company with Pelagon, Alastor, Chromius, Haemon, and
Bias shepherd of his people. He placed his knights with their
The Iliad |
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 Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: an attentive ear to my welcoming remarks.
"I couldn't make your man understand me at the station,"
she said at last, when her mind was at rest about her bicycle;
"I asked him how far it was, and what the roads were like,
and he only smiled. Is he German? But of course he is--
how odd that he didn't understand. You speak English very well,--
very well indeed, do you know." <140>
By this time we were in the library, and she stood on the hearth-rug
warming her back while I poured her out some tea.
"What a quaint room," she remarked, looking round,
"and the hall is so curious too. Very old, isn't it?
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
