| 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: When April bends above me
And finds me fast asleep,
Dust need not keep the secret
A live heart died to keep.
When April tells the thrushes,
The meadow-larks will know,
And pipe the three words lightly
To all the winds that blow.
Above his roof the swallows,
In notes like far-blown rain,
Will tell the little sparrow
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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 White Moll by Frank L. Packard: a fence, and taking it with the agility born of the open, athletic
life she had led with her father in the mining camps of South
America, now hiding at the mouth of a lane waiting her chance to
cross an intersecting street when some receding footstep should have
died away, the terror of delay came gripping at her heart with an
icy clutch, submerging the fear of personal peril in the agony of
dread that, with her progress so slow, she would, after all, be too
late. And at times she almost cried out in her vexation and despair,
as once, when crouched behind a door-stoop, a policeman, not two
yards from her, stood and twirled his night stick under the street
lamp while the minutes sped and raced themselves away.
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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 New Machiavelli by H. G. Wells: me now that I came no nearer to any understanding of women during
that time. That Locarno affair was infinitely more to me than I had
supposed. It ended something--nipped something in the bud perhaps--
took me at a stride from a vague, fine, ignorant, closed world of
emotion to intrigue and a perfectly definite and limited sensuality.
It ended my youth, and for a time it prevented my manhood. I had
never yet even peeped at the sweetest, profoundest thing in the
world, the heart and meaning of a girl, or dreamt with any quality
of reality of a wife or any such thing as a friend among womanhood.
My vague anticipation of such things in life had vanished
altogether. I turned away from their possibility. It seemed to me
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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 Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen: and insensible of any change in those who walk under your
shade!--But who will remain to enjoy you?"
CHAPTER 6
The first part of their journey was performed in too
melancholy a disposition to be otherwise than tedious
and unpleasant. But as they drew towards the end of it,
their interest in the appearance of a country which they
were to inhabit overcame their dejection, and a view of
Barton Valley as they entered it gave them cheerfulness.
It was a pleasant fertile spot, well wooded, and rich
in pasture. After winding along it for more than a mile,
Sense and Sensibility |
