| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: I bid the goats with arbute-leaves be stored,
And served with fresh spring-water, and their pens
Turned southward from the blast, to face the suns
Of winter, when Aquarius' icy beam
Now sinks in showers upon the parting year.
These too no lightlier our protection claim,
Nor prove of poorer service, howsoe'er
Milesian fleeces dipped in Tyrian reds
Repay the barterer; these with offspring teem
More numerous; these yield plenteous store of milk:
The more each dry-wrung udder froths the pail,
Georgics |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne: at this time of year. Besides, we could not reach Yokohama in time,
for it is sixteen hundred and sixty miles from Hong Kong."
"Only sixteen hundred," said Mr. Fogg.
"It's the same thing."
Fix breathed more freely.
"But," added the pilot, "it might be arranged another way."
Fix ceased to breathe at all.
"How?" asked Mr. Fogg.
"By going to Nagasaki, at the extreme south of Japan, or even
to Shanghai, which is only eight hundred miles from here.
In going to Shanghai we should not be forced to sail wide
Around the World in 80 Days |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: This feather stirs; she lives!
Mr. Booth, whose Lear had many noble qualities of passion, plucked,
I remember, some fur from his archaeologically-incorrect ermine for
the same business; but Salvini's was the finer effect of the two,
as well as the truer. And those who saw Mr. Irving in the last act
of RICHARD THE THIRD have not, I am sure, forgotten how much the
agony and terror of his dream was intensified, by contrast, through
the calm and quiet that preceded it, and the delivery of such lines
as
What, is my beaver easier than it was?
And all my armour laid into my tent?
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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 Pierre Grassou by Honore de Balzac: said Madame Vervelle.
The ways of genius had ruffled up these orderly bourgeois.
The phase of autumn so pleasantly named "Saint Martin's summer" was
just beginning. With the timidity of a neophyte in presence of a man
of genius, Vervelle risked giving Fougeres an invitation to come out
to his country-house on the following Sunday. He knew, he said, how
little attraction a plain bourgeois family could offer to an artist.
"You artists," he continued, "want emotions, great scenes, and witty
talk; but you'll find good wines, and I rely on my collection of
pictures to compensate an artist like you for the bore of dining with
mere merchants."
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