| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Have shrunk like the mimosa, and bleated like the lamb;
Round half my tender body, that none shall clasp but you,
For a crest and a fair adornment go dainty lines of blue.
Love, love, beloved Rua, love levels all degrees,
And the well-tattooed Taheia clings panting to your knees."
" - Taheia, song of the morning, how long is the longest love?
A cry, a clasp of the hands, a star that falls from above!
Ever at morn in the blue, and at night when all is black,
Ever it skulks and trembles with the hunter, Death, on its track.
Hear me, Taheia, death! For tomorrow the priest shall awake,
And the names be named of the victims to bleed for the nation's sake;
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: of man or beast; nothing to keep up your spirits and make you glad
to be alive. And so, at last, in the early part of the afternoon,
when I caught sight of a human creature, I felt a most grateful uplift.
This person was a man about forty-five years old, and he was
standing at the gate of one of those cozy little rose-clad cottages
of the sort already referred to. However, this one hadn't
a deserted look; it had the look of being lived in and petted
and cared for and looked after; and so had its front yard,
which was a garden of flowers, abundant, gay, and flourishing.
I was invited in, of course, and required to make myself at home--
it was the custom of the country..
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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 Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: made haste to start.
Nikita, the only one of Vasili Andreevich's labourers who was
not drunk that day, ran to harness the horse. Nikita, though
an habitual drunkard, was not drunk that day because since the
last day before the fast, when he had drunk his coat and
leather boots, he had sworn off drink and had kept his vow for
two months, and was still keeping it despite the temptation of
the vodka that had been drunk everywhere during the first two
days of the feast.
Nikita was a peasant of about fifty from a neighbouring
village, 'not a manager' as the peasants said of him, meaning
Master and Man |
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 Juana by Honore de Balzac: other planet. Her simplicity, which nothing had corrupted, her
beautiful virginity of soul, which her peaceful life restored to her,
her beauty and her true modesty, won her sincere homage. But observing
how few women ever entered her salons, she came to understand that
though her husband was following, without communicating its nature to
her, a new line of conduct, he had gained nothing actually in the
world's esteem.
Diard was not always lucky; far from it. In three years he had
dissipated three fourths of his fortune, but his passion for play gave
him the energy to continue it. He was intimate with a number of men,
more particularly with the roues of the Bourse, men who, since the
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