| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne: a hole."
"Go, Top, go!" cried Harding.
The dog, excited by his master's words, ran towards the extremity of the
cavern, and there redoubled his barking.
They followed him, and by the light of the torches, perceived the mouth
of a regular well in the granite. It was by this that the water escaped;
and this time it was not an oblique and practicable passage, but a
perpendicular well, into which it was impossible to venture.
The torches were held over the opening: nothing could be seen. Harding
took a lighted branch, and threw it into the abyss. The blazing resin,
whose illuminating power increased still more by the rapidity of its fall,
The Mysterious Island |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Beneath the hauberk of its feeling pure.
I truly saw, and still I seem to see it,
A trunk without a head walk in like manner
As walked the others of the mournful herd.
And by the hair it held the head dissevered,
Hung from the hand in fashion of a lantern,
And that upon us gazed and said: "O me!"
It of itself made to itself a lamp,
And they were two in one, and one in two;
How that can be, He knows who so ordains it.
When it was come close to the bridge's foot,
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
