| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: To creatures stern sad tunes, to change their kinds:
Since men prove beasts, let beasts bear gentle minds.'
As the poor frighted deer, that stands at gaze,
Wildly determining which way to fly,
Or one encompass'd with a winding maze,
That cannot tread the way out readily;
So with herself is she in mutiny,
To live or die which of the twain were better,
When life is sham'd, and Death reproach's debtor.
'To kill myself,' quoth she, 'alack! what were it,
But with my body my poor soul's pollution?
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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 Off on a Comet by Jules Verne: that were scattered over the plain. But toil as they might
at the accumulation of firewood, Captain Servadac and his
companions could not resist the conviction that the consumption
of a very short period would exhaust the total stock.
And what would happen then?
Studious if possible to conceal his real misgivings, and anxious that
the rest of the party should be affected as little as might be by his
own uneasiness, Servadac would wander alone about the island, racking his
brain for an idea that would point the way out of the serious difficulty.
But still all in vain.
One day he suddenly came upon Ben Zoof, and asked him whether he had no
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