| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: Revealing day through every cranny spies,
And seems to point her out where she sits weeping,
To whom she sobbing speaks: 'O eye of eyes,
Why pryest thou through my window? leave thy peeping;
Mock with thy tickling beams eyes that are sleeping:
Brand not my forehead with thy piercing light,
For day hath nought to do what's done by night.'
Thus cavils she with every thing she sees:
True grief is fond and testy as a child,
Who wayward once, his mood with nought agrees.
Old woes, not infant sorrows, bear them mild;
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: mair, and come in by to your supper.' And he took the boy,
and drew him close to him a moment, as they went through the
door, with something very fond and secret, like a caress
between a pair of lovers.
The next day M'Brair was abroad in the afternoon, and had a
long advising with Janet on the braes where she herded
cattle. What passed was never wholly known; but the lass
wept bitterly, and fell on her knees to him among the whins.
The same night, as soon as it was dark, he took the road
again for Balweary. In the Kirkton, where the dragoons
quartered, he saw many lights, and heard the noise of a
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: dress, perhaps, is not so tasteful, so simply elegant as ours. Upon
the whole I think more highly of our own country (I mean from a
social point of view alone) than before I came abroad. There is
less superiority over us in manners and all the social arts than I
could have believed possible in a country where a large and wealthy
class have been set apart from time immemorial to create, as it
were, a social standard of high refinement. The chief difference
that I perceive is this: In our country the position of everybody
is undefined and rests altogether upon public opinion. This leads
sometimes to a little assumption and pretension of manner, which the
highest class here, whose claims are always allowed by all about
|
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 The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: O would I had his sceptre for one hour!
You that have dared to break our bound, and gulled
Our servants, wronged and lied and thwarted us--
~I~ wed with thee! ~I~ bound by precontract
Your bride, our bondslave! not though all the gold
That veins the world were packed to make your crown,
And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir,
Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us:
I trample on your offers and on you:
Begone: we will not look upon you more.
Here, push them out at gates.'
|
