| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Pericles by William Shakespeare: Now, by the gods, I pity his misfortune,
And will awake him from his melancholy.
Come, gentlemen, we sit too long on trifles,
And waste the time, which looks for other revels.
Even in your armours, as you are address'd,
Will very well become a soldier's dance.
I will not have excuse, with saying this,
Loud music is too harsh for ladies' heads
Since they love men in arms as well as beds.
[The Knights dance.]
So, this was well ask'd, 'twas so well perform'd.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: passing and repassing in front of it. Bathsheba sat
here till it began to rain, and the light vanished, when
she withdrew to lie restlessly in her bed and re-enact
in a worn mind the lurid scene of yesternight.
Almost before the first faint sign of dawn appeared
she arose again, and opened the window to obtain a full
breathing of the new morning air, the panes being now
wet with trembling tears left by the night rain, each
one rounded with a pale lustre caught from primrose-
hued slashes through a cloud low down in the awaken-
ing sky. From the trees came the sound of steady
Far From the Madding Crowd |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: soap-bubbles; an amusement, as Hepzibah told Phoebe apart, that
had been a favorite one with her brother when they were both
children. Behold him, therefore, at the arched window, with an
earthen pipe in his mouth! Behold him, with his gray hair, and
a wan, unreal smile over his countenance, where still hovered a
beautiful grace, which his worst enemy must have acknowledged
to be spiritual and immortal, since it had survived so long!
Behold him, scattering airy spheres abroad from the window into
the street! Little impalpable worlds were those soap-bubbles,
with the big world depicted, in hues bright as imagination, on the
nothing of their surface. It was curious to see how the passers-by
House of Seven Gables |
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 Message by Honore de Balzac: wished for such a husband, for he was a Vicomte with an income of
twelve or fifteen thousand livres, "to say nothing of
expectations."
About a league out of Pouilly the coach was overturned. My
luckless comrade, thinking to save himself, jumped to the edge of
a newly-ploughed field, instead of following the fortunes of the
vehicle and clinging tightly to the roof, as I did. He either
miscalculated in some way, or he slipped; how it happened, I do
not know, but the coach fell over upon him, and he was crushed
under it.
We carried him into a peasant's cottage, and there, amid the
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