| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: She turned her back upon the boat and Stephen Smith, and saw,
towering still higher than themselves, the vertical face of the
hill on the right, which did not project seaward so far as the bed
of the valley, but formed the back of a small cove, and so was
visible like a concave wall, bending round from their position
towards the left.
The composition of the huge hill was revealed to its backbone and
marrow here at its rent extremity. It consisted of a vast
stratification of blackish-gray slate, unvaried in its whole
height by a single change of shade.
It is with cliffs and mountains as with persons; they have what is
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
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 Altar of the Dead by Henry James: melancholy that of the conviction that his health had quite failed.
His altar moreover had ceased to exist; his chapel, in his dreams,
was a great dark cavern. All the lights had gone out - all his
Dead had died again. He couldn't exactly see at first how it had
been in the power of his late companion to extinguish them, since
it was neither for her nor by her that they had been called into
being. Then he understood that it was essentially in his own soul
the revival had taken place, and that in the air of this soul they
were now unable to breathe. The candles might mechanically burn,
but each of them had lost its lustre. The church had become a
void; it was his presence, her presence, their common presence,
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