| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: And blotted out their brightness ere the dawn.
Have I not made the world to weep enough?
Give death to me. Yet life is more than death;
How could I leave the sound of singing winds,
The strong sweet scent that breathes from off the sea,
Or shut my eyes forever to the spring?
I will not give the grave my hands to hold,
My shining hair to light oblivion.
Have those who wander through the ways of death,
The still wan fields Elysian, any love
To lift their breasts with longing, any lips
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twilight Land by Howard Pyle: the year. That day and night the merry-making was merrier and
wilder and madder than it had ever been before, but the great
clock in the tower went on--tick, tock! tick, tock!--and by and
by it came midnight. Then, as it always happened before, the
lights went out, and all was as black as ink. But this time there
was no wailing and crying out, but everything was silent as
death; the door opened slowly, and in came, not six black men as
before, but nine men as silent as death, dressed all in flaming
red, and the torches they carried burned as red as blood. They
took King Selim by the arms, just as the six men had done, and
marched him through the same entries and passageways, and so came
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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 Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: in the country, that would say, The devil take this
usury, it keeps us from forfeitures, of mortgages
and bonds. The third and last is, that it is a vanity
to conceive, that there would be ordinary borrow-
ing without profit; and it is impossible to conceive,
the number of inconveniences that will ensue, if
borrowing be cramped. Therefore to speak of the
abolishing of usury is idle. All states have ever had
it, in one kind or rate, or other. So as that opinion
must be sent to Utopia.
To speak now of the reformation, and reigle-
Essays of Francis Bacon |
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 A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: Raoul's heart with joy. Marie was advancing under the pressure of her
desires with the regularity of the hands of a clock obeying the
mainspring. He found her sitting at the corner of the fireplace in the
little salon. Instead of looking at Nathan when he was announced, she
looked at his reflection in a mirror.
"Monsieur le ministre," said Madame d'Espard, addressing Nathan, and
presenting him to de Marsay by a glance, "was maintaining, when you
came in, that the royalists and the republicans have a secret
understanding. You ought to know something about it; is it so?"
"If it were so," said Raoul, "where's the harm? We hate the same
thing; we agree as to our hatreds, we differ only in our love. That's
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