| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Or under arches of the marble bridge
Hung, shadowed from the heat: some hid and sought
In the orange thickets: others tost a ball
Above the fountain-jets, and back again
With laughter: others lay about the lawns,
Of the older sort, and murmured that their May
Was passing: what was learning unto them?
They wished to marry; they could rule a house;
Men hated learned women: but we three
Sat muffled like the Fates; and often came
Melissa hitting all we saw with shafts
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter by Beatrix Potter: and full-skirted coats with flowered
lappets--when gentlemen wore
ruffles, and gold-laced waistcoats of
paduasoy and taffeta--there lived a
tailor in Gloucester.
He sat in the window of a little
shop in Westgate Street, cross-legged
on a table from morning till dark.
All day long while the light lasted
he sewed and snippetted, piecing out
his satin, and pompadour, and
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: "Please lend me your handkerchief," I said humbly,
"I--I have lost mine."
There was a great fumbling in six different pockets, and then
a handkerchief that made me young again merely to look at it was produced.
<104> I took it thankfully and rubbed with energy, the little girl,
intensely interested, watching the operation and giving me advice.
"There--it's all right now--a little more on the right--there--
now it's all off."
"Are you sure? No green left?" I anxiously asked.
"No, it's red all over now," she replied cheerfully.
"Let me get home," thought I, very much upset by this information,
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
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 Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: In scorn or friendship, nill I construe whether:
'T may be, she joy'd to jest at my exile,
'T may be, again to make me wander thither:
'Wander,' a word for shadows like myself,
As take the pain, but cannot pluck the pelf.
XV.
Lord, how mine eyes throw gazes to the east!
My heart doth charge the watch; the morning rise
Doth cite each moving sense from idle rest.
Not daring trust the office of mine eyes,
While Philomela sits and sings, I sit and mark,
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