| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman by Thomas Hardy: "Yes."
"Where are you going to next? To join your dear
husband?"
She could not bear the humiliating reminder.
"O--I don't know!" she said bitterly. "I have no
husband!"
"It is quite true--in the sense you mean. But you have
a friend, and I have determined that you shall be
comfortable in suite of yourself. When you get down to
your house you will see what I have sent there for
you."
Tess of the d'Urbervilles, A Pure Woman |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: I can answer spring at last,
Love is near me!
The Wanderer
I saw the sunset-colored sands,
The Nile like flowing fire between,
Where Rameses stares forth serene,
And Ammon's heavy temple stands.
I saw the rocks where long ago,
Above the sea that cries and breaks,
Swift Perseus with Medusa's snakes
Set free the maiden white like snow.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Bronte Sisters: cool, dispassionate sorrow and pity for his benighted mind, that he
withdrew, astonished, mortified, and discomforted; and, a few days
after, I heard that he had departed for London. He returned,
however, in eight or nine weeks, and did not entirely keep aloof
from me, but comported himself in so remarkable a manner that his
quick-sighted sister could not fail to notice the change.
'What have you done to Walter, Mrs. Huntingdon?' said she one
morning, when I had called at the Grove, and he had just left the
room after exchanging a few words of the coldest civility. 'He has
been so extremely ceremonious and stately of late, I can't imagine
what it is all about, unless you have desperately offended him.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall |
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 Animal Farm by George Orwell: "memoranda". These were large sheets of paper which had to be closely
covered with writing, and as soon as they were so covered, they were burnt
in the furnace. This was of the highest importance for the welfare of the
farm, Squealer said. But still, neither pigs nor dogs produced any food by
their own labour; and there were very many of them, and their appetites
were always good.
As for the others, their life, so far as they knew, was as it had always
been. They were generally hungry, they slept on straw, they drank from the
pool, they laboured in the fields; in winter they were troubled by the
cold, and in summer by the flies. Sometimes the older ones among them
racked their dim memories and tried to determine whether in the early
Animal Farm |
