| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: mill--and there is scarcely a twig left for them to perch on.
They no longer build nor breed with us. In some more genial
season, perchance, a faint shadow flits across the landscape of
the mind, cast by the WINGS of some thought in its vernal or
autumnal migration, but, looking up, we are unable to detect the
substance of the thought itself. Our winged thoughts are turned
to poultry. They no longer soar, and they attain only to a
Shanghai and Cochin- China grandeur. Those GRA-A-ATE THOUGHTS,
those GRA-A-ATE men you hear of!
We hug the earth--how rarely we mount! Methinks we might elevate
ourselves a little more. We might climb a tree, at least. I found
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: As the trembling stars of the summer night.
Turn from me now, but always hear
The muted laughter in the dew
Of that one year of youth we had,
The only youth we ever knew --
Turn from me now, or you will see
What other years have done to me.
Water Lilies
If you have forgotten water lilies floating
On a dark lake among mountains in the afternoon shade,
If you have forgotten their wet, sleepy fragrance,
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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 A Footnote to History by Robert Louis Stevenson: Saturday, the 10th, the chief Tamaseu, a Malietoa man of substance
and good character, was arrested on a charge of theft believed to
be vexatious, and cast by Martin into the municipal prison. He
sent to Moors, who was his tenant and owed him money at the time,
for bail. Moors applied to Sewall, ranking consul. After some
search, Martin was found and refused to consider bail before the
Monday morning. Whereupon Sewall demanded the keys from the
gaoler, accepted Moors's verbal recognisances, and set Tamaseu
free.
Things were now at a deadlock; and Becker astonished every one by
agreeing to a meeting on the 14th. It seems he knew what to
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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 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy: another world when life might be so very amusing in this world.
And with all this, Stepan Arkadyevitch, who liked a joke, was
fond of puzzling a plain man by saying that if he prided himself
on his origin, he ought not to stop at Rurik and disown the first
founder of his family--the monkey. And so Liberaism had become a
habit of Stepan Arkadyevitch's, and he liked his newspaper, as he
did his cigar after dinner, for the slight fog it diffused in his
brain. He read the leading article, in which it was maintained
that it was quite senseless in our day to raise an outcry that
radicalism was threatening to swallow up all conservative
elements, and that the government ought to take measures to crush
Anna Karenina |
