| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: The Sun has seene my Folly. Palamon!
Alas no; hees in heaven. Where am I now?
Yonder's the sea, and ther's a Ship; how't tumbles!
And ther's a Rocke lies watching under water;
Now, now, it beates upon it; now, now, now,
Ther's a leak sprung, a sound one, how they cry!
Spoon her before the winde, you'l loose all els:
Vp with a course or two, and take about, Boyes.
Good night, good night, y'ar gone.--I am very hungry.
Would I could finde a fine Frog; he would tell me
Newes from all parts o'th world, then would I make
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Youth by Joseph Conrad: break. We could hear him blubbering somewhere in the
shadows.
"On the third day the gale died out, and by-and-by a
north-country tug picked us up. We took sixteen days
in all to get from London to the Tyne! When we got
into dock we had lost our turn for loading, and they
hauled us off to a tier where we remained for a month.
Mrs. Beard (the captain's name was Beard) came from
Colchester to see the old man. She lived on board. The
crew of runners had left, and there remained only the
officers, one boy, and the steward, a mulatto who an-
Youth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mansion by Henry van Dyke: be understood--in what sense--treasures--in heaven?
The book seemed to float away from him. The light vanished.
He wondered dimly if this could be Death, coming so suddenly, so
quietly,
so irresistibly. He struggled for a moment to hold himself up,
and then sank slowly forward upon the table. His head rested
upon
his folded hands. He slipped into the unknown.
How long afterward conscious life returned to him he did not
know.
The blank might have been an hour or a century. He knew only
|
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 Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: pockets of his jacket, stopped short in surprise. 'COMMENT?
BAMTZ! BAMTZ!'
"He had run across him several times in his life. He exclaimed:
'BAMTZ! MAIS JE NE CONNAIS QUE CA!' And he applied such a
contemptuously indecent epithet to Bamtz that when, later, he
alluded to him as 'UNE CHIFFE' (a mere rag) it sounded quite
complimentary. 'We can do with him what we like,' he asserted
confidently. 'Oh, yes. Certainly we must hasten to pay a visit to
that - ' (another awful descriptive epithet quite unfit for
repetition). 'Devil take me if we don't pull off a coup that will
set us all up for a long time.'
Within the Tides |
