| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: Paler for sorrow than her milk-white dove,
For Adon's sake, a youngster proud and wild;
Her stand she takes upon a steep-up hill:
Anon Adonis comes with horn and hounds;
She, silly queen, with more than love's good will,
Forbade the boy he should not pass those grounds:
'Once,' quoth she, 'did I see a fair sweet youth
Here in these brakes deep-wounded with a boar,
Deep in the thigh, a spectacle of ruth!
See, in my thigh,' quoth she, 'here was the sore.
She showed hers: he saw more wounds than one,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: I watched you all safely out of the house one morning,
and left my name."
"Watched us out of the house!"
"Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often
I watched you, how often I was on the point of falling
in with you. I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight,
as the carriage drove by. Lodging as I did in Bond Street,
there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse
of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant
watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing
desire to keep out of your sight, could have separated us
Sense and Sensibility |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: running up the branch road, trembling with the fear of
meeting a familiar face. Presently she was out of
sight of the village, and climbing into the heart of
the forest. She could not hope to do the fifteen miles
to the Mountain that afternoon; but she knew of a place
half-way to Hamblin where she could sleep, and where no
one would think of looking for her. It was a little
deserted house on a slope in one of the lonely rifts of
the hills. She had seen it once, years before, when
she had gone on a nutting expedition to the grove of
walnuts below it. The party had taken refuge in the
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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 Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: The Princess of that castle was the one,
Brother, and that one only, who had ever
Made my heart leap; for when I moved of old
A slender page about her father's hall,
And she a slender maiden, all my heart
Went after her with longing: yet we twain
Had never kissed a kiss, or vowed a vow.
And now I came upon her once again,
And one had wedded her, and he was dead,
And all his land and wealth and state were hers.
And while I tarried, every day she set
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