| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake: Lives not alone nor or itself: fear not and I will call,
The weak worm from its lowly bed, and thou shalt hear its voice.
Come forth worm and the silent valley, to thy pensive queen.
The helpless worm arose and sat upon the Lillys leaf,
And the bright Cloud saild on, to find his partner in the vale.
III.
Then Thel astonish'd view'd the Worm upon its dewy bed.
Art thou a Worm? image of weakness. art thou but a Worm?
I see thee like an infant wrapped in the Lillys leaf;
Ah weep not little voice, thou can'st not speak, but thou can'st weep:
Is this a Worm? I see they lay helpless & naked: weeping
Poems of William Blake |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne: "Where's your box?" he cried.
"It is ready," I replied, with faltering voice.
"Then make haste down, or we shall lose the train."
It was now manifestly impossible to maintain the struggle against
destiny. I went up again to my room, and rolling my portmanteaus
downstairs I darted after him.
At that moment my uncle was solemnly investing Gräuben with the reins
of government. My pretty Virlandaise was as calm and collected as was
her wont. She kissed her guardian; but could not restrain a tear in
touching my cheek with her gentle lips.
"Gräuben!" I murmured.
Journey to the Center of the Earth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: KING JOHN.
Aye, now I call to mind the prophesy,
But I must give no entrance to a fear.--
Return, and hearten up these yielding souls:
Tell them, the ravens, seeing them in arms,
So many fair against a famished few,
Come but to dine upon their handy work
And prey upon the carrion that they kill:
For when we see a horse laid down to die,
Although he be not dead, the ravenous birds
Sit watching the departure of his life;
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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 Jolly Corner by Henry James: in which he might passively know it.
The apprehension of knowing it must after a little have grown in
him, and the strangest moment of his adventure perhaps, the most
memorable or really most interesting, afterwards, of his crisis,
was the lapse of certain instants of concentrated conscious COMBAT,
the sense of a need to hold on to something, even after the manner
of a man slipping and slipping on some awful incline; the vivid
impulse, above all, to move, to act, to charge, somehow and upon
something - to show himself, in a word, that he wasn't afraid. The
state of "holding on" was thus the state to which he was
momentarily reduced; if there had been anything, in the great
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