| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: suddenly lighter, and my spirits rose accordingly. I shouted
down to those below that I saw daylight ahead, and a great shout
of thanksgiving reverberated through the ship. A moment later we
emerged into sunlit water, and immediately I raised the periscope
and looked about me upon the strangest landscape I had ever seen.
We were in the middle of a broad and now sluggish river the banks
of which were lined by giant, arboraceous ferns, raising their
mighty fronds fifty, one hundred, two hundred feet into the
quiet air. Close by us something rose to the surface of the river
and dashed at the periscope. I had a vision of wide, distended jaws,
and then all was blotted out. A shiver ran down into the tower as
The Land that Time Forgot |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Falk by Joseph Conrad: had fled, wonder audibly what he might mean. To
this Hermann, crossing his legs with a swing and
settling himself viciously away from me in his chair,
said: "That fellow don't know himself what he
means."
There might have been some insight in such a
remark. I said nothing, and, still averted, he
added: "When I was here last year he was just
the same." An eruption of tobacco smoke envel-
oped his head as if his temper had exploded like
gunpowder.
Falk |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: for Gwendolen, to whom, as soon as Mrs. Erme was sufficiently
better to allow her a little leisure, he made a point of
introducing me. I remember our going together one Sunday in August
to a huddled house in Chelsea, and my renewed envy of Corvick's
possession of a friend who had some light to mingle with his own.
He could say things to her that I could never say to him. She had
indeed no sense of humour and, with her pretty way of holding her
head on one side, was one of those persons whom you want, as the
phrase is, to shake, but who have learnt Hungarian by themselves.
She conversed perhaps in Hungarian with Corvick; she had remarkably
little English for his friend. Corvick afterwards told me that I
|
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 Lucile by Owen Meredith: Glare, scenting the breath of each other.
The one
Double-bodied, two-headed--by separate ways
Winding, serpent-wise, nearer; the other, each day's
Sullen toil adding size to,--concentrated, solid,
Indefatigable--the brass-fronted, embodied,
And audible [Greek text omitted] gone sombrely forth
To the world from that Autocrat Will of the north!
V.
In the dawn of a moody October, a pale
Ghostly motionless vapor began to prevail
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