| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith: No career had he follow'd, no object obtain'd
In the world by those worldly advantages gain'd
From nuptials beyond which once seem'd to appear,
Lit by love, the broad path of a brilliant career.
All that glitter'd and gleam'd through the moonlight of youth
With a glory so fair, now that manhood in truth
Grasp'd and gather'd it, seem'd like that false fairy gold
Which leaves in the hand only moss, leaves, and mould!
V.
Fairy gold! moss and leaves! and the young Fairy Bride?
Lived there yet fairy-lands in the face at his side?
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: crosses and interferes with the quiet of the square. Characters
of this kind frequently pass through the Inn from a little foxhole
of an alley at the back, but they never loiter there.
It is hardly necessary to state that all the sights and movements
proper to the Inn are most orderly. On the fine October evening
on which we follow Stephen Smith to this place, a placid porter is
sitting on a stool under a sycamore-tree in the midst, with a
little cane in his hand. We notice the thick coat of soot upon
the branches, hanging underneath them in flakes, as in a chimney.
The blackness of these boughs does not at present improve the
tree--nearly forsaken by its leaves as it is--but in the spring
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: it were possible, in his love affairs, one of these souls absorbed in
money and trade, to whom a genuine passion must appear a quite
monstrous speculation, a thing unheard-of. Nothing meanwhile, was
altered at the sign of the Cat and Racket. If Augustine was absent-
minded, if, against all obedience to the domestic code, she stole up
to her room to make signals by means of a jar of flowers, if she
sighed, if she were lost in thought, no one observed it, not even her
mother. This will cause some surprise to those who have entered into
the spirit of the household, where an idea tainted with poetry would
be in startling contrast to persons and things, where no one could
venture on a gesture or a look which would not be seen and analyzed.
|
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 Dreams by Olive Schreiner: under her feet. Out in the moonlight the soft air was blowing, and the
sand glittered on the beach. She ran along the smooth shore, then suddenly
she stood still. Out across the water there was something moving. She
shaded her eyes and looked. It was a boat; it was sliding swiftly over the
moonlit water out to sea. One stood upright in it; the face the moonlight
did not show, but the figure she knew. It was passing swiftly; it seemed
as if no one propelled it; the moonlight's shimmer did not let her see
clearly, and the boat was far from shore, but it seemed almost as if there
was another figure sitting in the stern. Faster and faster it glided over
the water away, away. She ran along the shore; she came no nearer it. The
garment she had held closed fluttered open; she stretched out her arms, and
|
