| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson: Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
Brake in among dead faces, to and fro
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,
And shivered brands that once had fought with Rome,
And rolling far along the gloomy shores
The voice of days of old and days to be.
Then spake King Arthur to Sir Bedivere,
And whiter than the mist that all day long
Had held the field of battle was the King:
'Hearest thou this great voice that shakes the world,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte: supplications to have but one glimpse! I had not one. She showed
herself, as she often was in life, a devil to me! And, since then,
sometimes more and sometimes less, I've been the sport of that
intolerable torture! Infernal! keeping my nerves at such a stretch
that, if they had not resembled catgut, they would long ago have
relaxed to the feebleness of Linton's. When I sat in the house
with Hareton, it seemed that on going out I should meet her; when I
walked on the moors I should meet her coming in. When I went from
home I hastened to return; she MUST be somewhere at the Heights, I
was certain! And when I slept in her chamber - I was beaten out of
that. I couldn't lie there; for the moment I closed my eyes, she
Wuthering Heights |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eryxias by Platonic Imitator: beneficial or not,--a thing, too, which is esteemed of the highest
importance by the Hellenes:--(for parents, as soon as their children are,
as they think, come to years of discretion, urge them to consider how
wealth may be acquired, since by riches the value of a man is judged):--
When, I say, we are thus in earnest, and you, who agree in other respects,
fall to disputing about a matter of such moment, that is, about wealth, and
not merely whether it is black or white, light or heavy, but whether it is
a good or an evil, whereby, although you are now the dearest of friends and
kinsmen, the most bitter hatred may arise betwixt you, I must hinder your
dissension to the best of my power. If I could, I would tell you the
truth, and so put an end to the dispute; but as I cannot do this, and each
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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 Bureaucracy by Honore de Balzac: ideas to those around her, for she felt herself without equals in mind
who could comprehend her. Though facts compelled her to judge her
husband, her religious duty led her to keep up as best she could a
favorable opinion of him; she showed him marked respect; honored him
as the father of her child, her husband, the temporal power, as the
vicar of Saint-Paul's told her. She would have thought it a mortal sin
to make a single gesture, or give a single glance, or say a single
word which would reveal to others her real opinion of the imbecile
Baudoyer. She even professed to obey passively all his wishes. But her
ears were receptive of many things; she thought them over, weighed and
compared them in the solitude of her mind, and judged so soberly of
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