| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: And bade his laurels learn, Silenus sang;
Till from Olympus, loth at his approach,
Vesper, advancing, bade the shepherds tell
Their tale of sheep, and pen them in the fold.
ECLOGUE VII
MELIBOEUS CORYDON THYRSIS
Daphnis beneath a rustling ilex-tree
Had sat him down; Thyrsis and Corydon
Had gathered in the flock, Thyrsis the sheep,
And Corydon the she-goats swollen with milk-
Both in the flower of age, Arcadians both,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Persuasion by Jane Austen: "She is dead! she is dead!" screamed Mary, catching hold of her
husband, and contributing with his own horror to make him immoveable;
and in another moment, Henrietta, sinking under the conviction, lost
her senses too, and would have fallen on the steps, but for Captain
Benwick and Anne, who caught and supported her between them.
"Is there no one to help me?" were the first words which
burst from Captain Wentworth, in a tone of despair, and as if
all his own strength were gone.
"Go to him, go to him," cried Anne, "for heaven's sake go to him.
I can support her myself. Leave me, and go to him. Rub her hands,
rub her temples; here are salts; take them, take them."
Persuasion |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Village Rector by Honore de Balzac: would no doubt have put a farm had he lived; there's an excellent
place for one, where the spring which rises just by my house loses
itself below."
Farrabesche rode first to show the way, taking Veronique through a
path which led to the spot where the two slopes drew closely together
and then flew apart, one to the east the other to the west, as if
repulsed by a shock. This narrow passage, filled with large rocks and
coarse, tall grasses, was only about sixty feet in width.
The Roche-Vive, cut perpendicularly on this side looked like a wall of
granite in which there was no foothold; but above this inflexible wall
was a crown of trees, the roots of which hung down it, mostly pines
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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 Touchstone by Edith Wharton: their first acquaintance at Hillbridge. Glennard, on leaving
college, had begun life in his uncle's law office in the old
university town. It was there that, at the house of her father,
Professor Forth, he had first met the young lady then chiefly
distinguished for having, after two years of a conspicuously
unhappy marriage, returned to the protection of the paternal roof.
Mrs. Aubyn was at that time an eager and somewhat tragic young
woman, of complex mind and undeveloped manners, whom her crude
experience of matrimony had fitted out with a stock of
generalizations that exploded like bombs in the academic air of
Hillbridge. In her choice of a husband she had been fortunate
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