| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: sphere of Instinct that you may suffer there for others!
"Farewell, ye mariners who seek the Orient through the thick darkness
of your abstractions, vast as principles! Farewell, martyrs of
thought, led by thought into the presence of the True Light. Farewell,
regions of study where mine ears can hear the plaint of genius
neglected and insulted, the sigh of the patient scholar to whom
enlightenment comes too late!
"I see the angelic choir, the wafting of perfumes, the incense of the
heart of those who go their way consoling, praying, imparting
celestial balm and living light to suffering souls! Courage, ye choir
of Love! you to whom the peoples cry, 'Comfort us, comfort us, defend
Seraphita |
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 Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: eliminating.
A flight of six steps, brass-bound and bearing the double L of the
bark's monogram, led them down into a sort of vestibule. From the
vestibule a door opened directly into the main cabin. They
entered.
The cabin was some twenty feet long and unusually spacious. Fresh
from his recollection of the grime and reek of the schooner, it
struck Wilbur as particularly dainty. It was painted white with
stripes of blue, gold and pea-green. On either side three doors
opened off into staterooms and private cabins, and with each roll
of the derelict these doors banged like an irregular discharge of
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