| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: him, with a glance, one of those glances that--in short, you
understand.
"At length Godefroid discovered a great mystery in Malvina. Whenever
du Tillet knocked at the door, the live red that colored Malvina's
face said 'Ferdinand!' When the poor girl's eyes fell on that two-
footed tiger, they lighted up like a brazier fanned by a current of
air. When Ferdinand drew her away to the window or a side table, she
betrayed her secret infinite joy. It is a rare and wonderful thing to
see a woman so much in love that she loses her cunning to be strange,
and you can read her heart; as rare (dear me!) in Paris as the Singing
Flower in the Indies. But in spite of a friendship dating from the
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: the grim intensity,of her political method, in her maritime and
commercial ascendancy. But she repeated no previous state at all
in the lax disorder of her internal administration, a laxity that
made vast sections of her area lawless beyond precedent, so that
it was possible for whole districts to be impassable, while civil
war raged between street and street, and for Alsatias to exist in
her midst in which the official police never set foot. She was
an ethnic whirlpool. The flags of all nations flew in her
harbour, and at the climax, the yearly coming and going overseas
numbered together upwards of two million human beings. To Europe
she was America, to America she was the gateway of the world.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Richard III by William Shakespeare: God witness with me, I have wept for thine.
QUEEN MARGARET. Bear with me; I am hungry for revenge,
And now I cloy me with beholding it.
Thy Edward he is dead, that kill'd my Edward;
The other Edward dead, to quit my Edward;
Young York he is but boot, because both they
Match'd not the high perfection of my loss.
Thy Clarence he is dead that stabb'd my Edward;
And the beholders of this frantic play,
Th' adulterate Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Grey,
Untimely smother'd in their dusky graves.
Richard III |
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 Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: TO YOUTH
O Youth, sweet comrade Youth, wouldst thou be gone?
Long have we dwelt together, thou and I;
Together drunk of many an alien dawn,
And plucked the fruit of many an alien sky.
Ah, fickle friend, must I, who yesterday
Dreamed forwards to long, undimmed ecstasy,
Henceforward dream, because thou wilt not stay,
Backward to transient pleasure and to thee?
I give thee back thy false, ephemeral vow;
But, O beloved comrade, ere we part,
|
