| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft: speak to the attorney; he frequently paid me compliments. His
character did not intimidate me; but, imagining that Peggy must be
mistaken, and that no man could turn a deaf ear to such a tale of
complicated distress, I determined to walk to the town with Mary
the next morning, and request him to wait for the rent, and keep
my secret, till my uncle's return.
"My repose was sweet; and, waking with the first dawn of day,
I bounded to Mary's cottage. What charms do not a light heart
spread over nature! Every bird that twittered in a bush, every
flower that enlivened the hedge, seemed placed there to awaken me
to rapture--yes; to rapture. The present moment was full fraught
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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 The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) by Dante Alighieri: Accomplish perfectly thy journeying,
Whereunto prayer and holy love have sent me,
Fly with thine eyes all round about this garden;
For seeing it will discipline thy sight
Farther to mount along the ray divine.
And she, the Queen of Heaven, for whom I burn
Wholly with love, will grant us every grace,
Because that I her faithful Bernard am."
As he who peradventure from Croatia
Cometh to gaze at our Veronica,
Who through its ancient fame is never sated,
The Divine Comedy (translated by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) |
