| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: cedar-bird, with its red tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its
little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that noisy
coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes,
screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and
pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove.
As Ichabod jogged slowly on his way, his eye, ever open to
every symptom of culinary abundance, ranged with delight over the
treasures of jolly autumn. On all sides he beheld vast store of
apples: some hanging in oppressive opulence on the trees; some
gathered into baskets and barrels for the market; others heaped
up in rich piles for the cider-press. Farther on he beheld great
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
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 At the Earth's Core by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the semidarkness of the cave I could not see her features,
and I was rather glad, for I disliked to think of the hate
that I should have read there.
I never said a word to her at first. I just strode
across the cave and grasped her by the wrists, and when
she struggled, I put my arm around her so as to pinion her
hands to her sides. She fought like a tigress, but I took
my free hand and pushed her head back--I imagine that I
had suddenly turned brute, that I had gone back a thousand
million years, and was again a veritable cave man taking
my mate by force--and then I kissed that beautiful mouth
At the Earth's Core |
