| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: Smiling and kind, you grace a shelf
Too high for me to reach myself.
Reach down a hand, my dear, and take
These rhymes for old acquaintance' sake!
Yet you have farther gone!
"Can I get there by candlelight?"
So goes the old refrain.
I do not know--perchance you might--
But only, children, hear it right,
Ah, never to return again!
The eternal dawn, beyond a doubt,
A Child's Garden of Verses |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad: whose comical aspect was lost upon a woman haunted by the fear of
the gallows, "but I do now. I - I understand," he floundered on,
his mind speculating as to what sort of atrocities Verloc could
have practised under the sleepy, placid appearances of his married
estate. It was positively awful. "I understand," he repeated, and
then by a sudden inspiration uttered an - "Unhappy woman!" of lofty
commiseration instead of the more familiar "Poor darling!" of his
usual practice. This was no usual case. He felt conscious of
something abnormal going on, while he never lost sight of the
greatness of the stake. "Unhappy, brave woman!"
He was glad to have discovered that variation; but he could
The Secret Agent |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Another Study of Woman by Honore de Balzac: angelic woman!"
At these words all the women looked down, as if hurt by this brutal
truth so brutally stated.
"I will say nothing of the night, nor of the week I spent," de Marsay
went on. "I discovered that I was a statesman."
It was so well said that we all uttered an admiring exclamation.
"As I thought over the really cruel vengeance to be taken on a woman,"
said de Marsay, continuing his story, "with infernal ingenuity--for,
as we had loved each other, some terrible and irreparable revenges
were possible--I despised myself, I felt how common I was, I
insensibly formulated a horrible code--that of Indulgence. In taking
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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: (For in a wink the false love turns to hate)
She would have stabbed him; but she found it not:
His eye was calm, and suddenly she took
To bitter weeping like a beaten child,
A long, long weeping, not consolable.
Then her false voice made way, broken with sobs:
'O crueller than was ever told in tale,
Or sung in song! O vainly lavished love!
O cruel, there was nothing wild or strange,
Or seeming shameful--for what shame in love,
So love be true, and not as yours is--nothing
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