| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: What largeness thinks in paradise was sawn.
'Small show of man was yet upon his chin;
His phoenix down began but to appear,
Like unshorn velvet, on that termless skin,
Whose bare out-bragg'd the web it seemed to wear:
Yet show'd his visage by that cost more dear;
And nice affections wavering stood in doubt
If best were as it was, or best without.
His qualities were beauteous as his form,
For maiden-tongued he was, and thereof free;
Yet if men mov'd him, was he such a storm
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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 A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: long white break water shines like a thick bar of solid silver.
With a quick rattle of blocks and one single silky swish, the
sail is filled by a little breeze keen enough to have come
straight down from the frozen moon, and the boat, after the
clatter of the hauled-in sweeps, seems to stand at rest,
surrounded by a mysterious whispering so faint and unearthly that
it may be the rustling of the brilliant, overpowering moon rays
breaking like a rain-shower upon the hard, smooth, shadowless
sea.
I may well remember that last night spent with the pilots of the
Third Company. I have known the spell of moonlight since, on
A Personal Record |
