| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: Of nightingales awake and strain
Their souls into a quivering song.
INDIAN DANCERS
Eyes ravished with rapture, celestially panting,
what passionate bosoms aflaming with
fire
Drink deep of the hush of the hyacinth
heavens that glimmer around them in
fountains of light;
O wild and entrancing the strain of keen music
that cleaveth the stars like a wail of
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tom Grogan by F. Hopkinson Smith: coming spring, and all the girls were gay in new attire. Dennis
Quigg had been lounging outside the church door, his silk hat and
green satin necktie glistening in the sun. When Jennie tripped
out Quigg started forward. The look on his face, as with swinging
shoulders he slouched beside her, sent a thrill of indignation
through Carl. He could give her up, perhaps, if Tom insisted, but
never to a man like Quigg. Before the walking delegate had
"passed the time of day," the young sailor was close beside
Jennie, within touch of her hand.
There was no love lost between the two men. Carl had not
forgotten the proposition Quigg had made to him to leave Tom's
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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 The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash
payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of
religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine
sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It
has resolved personal worth into exchange value. And in place of
the numberless and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up that
single, unconscionable freedom -- Free Trade. In one word, for
exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked,
shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation
hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has
The Communist Manifesto |
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 Letters from England by Elizabeth Davis Bancroft: wished to marry, and to whom so many of his later letters are
addressed. She is eighty-four, her sister a few years younger, and
Lady Charlotte not much their junior.
These remnants of the BELLES-ESPRITS of the last age are charming to
me. They have a vast and long experience of the best social
circles, with native wit, and constant practice in the conversation
of society. . . . On Wednesday, we dined at Sir Robert Peel's, with
whom I was more charmed than with anybody I have seen yet. I sat
between him and the Speaker of the House of Commons. I was told
that he was stiff and stately in his manners, but did not think him
so, and am inclined to imagine that free from the burden of the
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