| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Above the war-crowd gibbered, and Rua stood smiling beneath.
Thick, like leaves in the autumn, faint, like April sleet,
Missiles from tremulous hands quivered around his feet;
And Taheia leaped from her place; and the priest, the ruby-eyed,
Ran to the front of the terrace, and brandished his arms, and cried:
"Hold, O fools, he brings tidings!" and "Hold, 'tis the love of my heart!"
Till lo! in front of the terrace, Rua pierced with a dart.
Taheia cherished his head, and the aged priest stood by,
And gazed with eyes of ruby at Rua's darkening eye.
"Taheia, here is the end, I die a death for a man.
I have given the life of my soul to save an unsavable clan.
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: wings of the bird flapped in unison. When clouds gathered on the
horizon and the thunder rumbled, Loulou would scream, perhaps because
he remembered the storms in his native forests. The dripping of the
rain would excite him to frenzy; he flapped around, struck the ceiling
with his wings, upset everything, and would finally fly into the
garden to play. Then he would come back into the room, light on one of
the andirons, and hop around in order to get dry.
One morning during the terrible winter of 1837, when she had put him
in front of the fire-place on account of the cold, she found him dead
in his cage, hanging to the wire bars with his head down. He had
probably died of congestion. But she believed that he had been
A Simple Soul |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: "is from his birth scouted by his own parents, derided by
his brothers and sisters, neglected by the domestics,
scorned and suspected by society, and excluded from all posts
of responsibility, trust, and useful activity. His every movement
is jealously watched by the police till he comes of age
and presents himself for inspection; then he is either destroyed,
if he is found to exceed the fixed margin of deviation,
or else immured in a Government Office as a clerk of
the seventh class; prevented from marriage; forced to drudge
at an uninteresting occupation for a miserable stipend;
obliged to live and board at the office, and to take even his vacation
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
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 Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: BEALE STREET BLUES. while a hundred pairs of golden and silver
slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were
always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever,
while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the
sad horns around the floor.
Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the
season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with
half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and
chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor
beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a
decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately--and the decision
The Great Gatsby |
