| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Paz by Honore de Balzac: countess fully competent to carry on her affairs alone; for Clementine
was one of those far-sighted women, full of instinct, who have an
innate genius as mistress of a household.
This position of affairs, which Thaddeus had led up to naturally, did
not end without further cruel trials; his sufferings were fated not to
be as sweet and tender as he was trying to make them. The poor lover
forgot to reckon on the hazard of events. Adam fell seriously ill, and
Thaddeus, instead of leaving the house, stayed to nurse his friend.
His devotion was unwearied. A woman who had any interest in employing
her perspicacity might have seen in this devotion a sort of punishment
imposed by a noble soul to repress an involuntary evil thought; but
|
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 Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Of a sharp metal. When I looked again,
To see them shine, the cold that I had felt
Was gone to make way for a smouldering
Of lonely fire that I, as I knew then,
Could never quench with kindness or with lies.
I should have done whatever there was to do
For Ferguson, yet I could not have mourned
In honesty for once around the clock
The loss of him, for my sake or for his,
Try as I might; nor would his ghost approve,
Had I the power and the unthinking will
|
