| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: you.
'Oh! I have watched you by day and by night: I have seen the
longing in your eyes for a face which you have lost and for the
land of your youth. Be happy, you shall gain both, for the
struggle is ended and the Lily maid has been too strong for me. I
grow weak and I have little more to say. We part, and perhaps for
ever, for what is there between us save the souls of those dead
sons of ours? Since you desire me no more, that I may make our
severance perfect, now in the hour of my death I renounce your gods
and I seek my own, though I think that I love yours and hate those
of my people. Is there any communion between them? We part, and
Montezuma's Daughter |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from United States Declaration of Independence: new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing
its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect
their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed
to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and
usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce
them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw
off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now
United States Declaration of Independence |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad: seems that I am not sufficiently literary. Indeed, a man who
never wrote a line for print till he was thirty-six cannot bring
himself to look upon his existence and his experience, upon the
sum of his thoughts, sensations, and emotions, upon his memories
and his regrets, and the whole possession of his past, as only so
much material for his hands. Once before, some three years ago,
when I published "The Mirror of the Sea," a volume of impressions
and memories, the same remarks were made to me. Practical
remarks. But, truth to say, I have never understood the kind of
thrift they recommend. I wanted to pay my tribute to the sea,
its ships and its men, to whom I remain indebted for so much
A Personal Record |
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 Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: great notion of his 'not to get too deep.' He took counsel of his
sometime guardian. 'The funds are now at par, my dear boy,' quoth
d'Aiglemont; 'sell out. I have sold mine and my wife's. Nucingen has
all my capital, and is giving me six per cent; do likewise, you will
have one per cent the more upon your capital, and with that you will
be quite comfortable.'
"In three days' time our Godefroid was comfortable. His increase of
income exactly supplied his superfluities; his material happiness was
complete.
"Suppose that it were possible to read the minds of all the young men
in Paris at one glance (as, it appears, will be done at the Day of
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