| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: the gloomy pines, nor heard the wind which still, as she began
each verse, sent a heavy breath through the branches, and died
away in a hollow moan from the burden of the song. She was
aroused by the report of a gun in the vicinity of the encampment;
and either the sudden sound, or her loneliness by the glowing
fire, caused her to tremble violently. The next moment she
laughed in the pride of a mother's heart.
"My beautiful young hunter! My boy has slain a deer!" she
exclaimed, recollecting that in the direction whence the shot
proceeded Cyrus had gone to the chase.
She waited a reasonable time to hear her son's light step
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: You four, from hence to prison back again,
From thence unto the place of execution.
The witch in Smithfield shall be burn'd to ashes,
And you three shall be strangled on the gallows.--
You, madam, for you are more nobly born,
Despoiled of your honour in your life,
Shall, after three days' open penance done,
Live in your country here in banishment,
With Sir John Stanley, in the Isle of Man.
DUCHESS.
Welcome is banishment; welcome were my death.
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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 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: splendor of the little inspiration with which, after I had got
him into the house, the boy met my final articulate challenge.
As soon as I appeared in the moonlight on the terrace,
he had come to me as straight as possible; on which I had taken
his hand without a word and led him, through the dark spaces,
up the staircase where Quint had so hungrily hovered for him,
along the lobby where I had listened and trembled, and so to
his forsaken room.
Not a sound, on the way, had passed between us, and I had wondered--
oh, HOW I had wondered!--if he were groping about in his
little mind for something plausible and not too grotesque.
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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 The Tapestried Chamber by Walter Scott: the solitude of decay nor the bustle of novelty; the houses were
old, but in good repair; and the beautiful little river murmured
freely on its way to the left of the town, neither restrained by
a dam nor bordered by a towing-path.
Upon a gentle eminence, nearly a mile to the southward of the
town, were seen, amongst many venerable oaks and tangled
thickets, the turrets of a castle as old as the walls of York and
Lancaster, but which seemed to have received important
alterations during the age of Elizabeth and her successor, It had
not been a place of great size; but whatever accommodation it
formerly afforded was, it must be supposed, still to be obtained
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