| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Don Quixote by Miquel de Cervantes: confusion all through the household? Are we going, do you fancy, to
the house of our wenches, like gallants who come and knock and go in
at any hour, however late it may be?"
"Let us first of all find out the palace for certain," replied Don
Quixote, "and then I will tell thee, Sancho, what we had best do;
but look, Sancho, for either I see badly, or that dark mass that one
sees from here should be Dulcinea's palace."
"Then let your worship lead the way," said Sancho, "perhaps it may
be so; though I see it with my eyes and touch it with my hands, I'll
believe it as much as I believe it is daylight now."
Don Quixote took the lead, and having gone a matter of two hundred
Don Quixote |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from What is Man? by Mark Twain: drifting flakes. The snow lay lightly on the golden gloves that
tremble like peacocks-crests above the vast domes, and plumed
them with softest white; it robed the saints in ermine; and it
danced over all its works, as if exulting in its beauty--beauty
which filled me with subtle, selfish yearning to keep such
evanescent loveliness for the little-while-longer of my whole
life, and with despair to think that even the poor lifeless
shadow of it could never be fairly reflected in picture or poem.
Through the wavering snowfall, the Saint Theodore upon one
of the granite pillars of the Piazzetta did not show so grim as
his wont is, and the winged lion on the other might have been a
What is Man? |
