| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: against sense, feeling, and ridicule. It's a flint.
Jasper would have made his request all the same and then taken his
own way; but it was Freya who decided that nothing should be said,
on the ground that, "Papa would only worry himself to distraction."
He was capable of making himself ill, and then she wouldn't have
the heart to leave him. Here you have the sanity of feminine
outlook and the frankness of feminine reasoning. And for the rest,
Miss Freya could read "poor dear papa" in the way a woman reads a
man - like an open book. His daughter once gone, old Nelson would
not worry himself. He would raise a great outcry, and make no end
of lamentable fuss, but that's not the same thing. The real
'Twixt Land & Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
-- But who is that on the other side of you?
What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth
Ringed by the flat horizon only 370
What is the city over the mountains
Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air
Falling towers
The Waste Land |
