| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Rises for us: the seasons natural
Weave the same tapestry of green and grey:
The unchanged hills are with us: but that Spirit hath passed away.
And yet perchance it may be better so,
For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen,
Murder her brother is her bedfellow,
And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene
And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set;
Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!
For gentle brotherhood, the harmony
Of living in the healthful air, the swift
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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 Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: days I never forgot the fact of my elevation for five consecutive
minutes. I fancy it kept me warm, even in my slumbers, better than
the high pile of blankets, which positively crackled with frost as
I threw them off in the morning. And I would get up early for no
reason whatever except that I was in sole charge. The new captain
had not been appointed yet.
Almost each morning a letter from my owners would arrive, directing
me to go to the charterers and clamour for the ship's cargo; to
threaten them with the heaviest penalties of demurrage; to demand
that this assortment of varied merchandise, set fast in a landscape
of ice and windmills somewhere up-country, should be put on rail
The Mirror of the Sea |
