| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: For your light foot I wearied, and your knock
That was the glad reveille of my day.
Lo, now, when to your task in the great house
At morning through the portico you pass,
One moment glance, where by the pillared wall
Far-voyaging island gods, begrimed with smoke,
Sit now unworshipped, the rude monument
Of faiths forgot and races undivined:
Sit now disconsolate, remembering well
The priest, the victim, and the songful crowd,
The blaze of the blue noon, and that huge voice,
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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 Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Bronte Sisters: as he is,' pleaded I. But still, with hand and eye, she silently
called him to her side.
'No, mamma,' said the child; 'let me look at these pictures first;
and then I'll come, and tell you all about them.'
'We are going to have a small party on Monday, the fifth of
November,' said my mother; 'and I hope you will not refuse to make
one, Mrs. Graham. You can bring your little boy with you, you know
- I daresay we shall be able to amuse him; - and then you can make
your own apologies to the Millwards and Wilsons - they will all be
here, I expect.'
'Thank you, I never go to parties.'
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells: Reverend Harold Benham was a first husband and long since dead, but
that was all. As a matter of fact, in his increasingly futile way
he wasn't, either at Seagate or in the Educational Supplement of the
TIMES. But even the most conscientious of us are not obliged to go
to Seagate or read the Educational Supplement of the TIMES.
Lady Marayne's plans for her son's future varied very pleasantly.
She was an industrious reader of biographies, and more particularly
of the large fair biographies of the recently contemporary; they
mentioned people she knew, they recalled scenes, each sowed its
imaginative crop upon her mind, a crop that flourished and flowered
until a newer growth came to oust it. She saw her son a diplomat, a
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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 Chance by Joseph Conrad: am sure he does not. I could not stand being liked by any of these
people. If I thought he liked me I would drown myself rather than
go back with him."
For of course he had come to take "Florrie" home. The scene was the
dining-room--breakfast interrupted, dishes growing cold, little
Fyne's toast growing leathery, Fyne out of his chair with his back
to the fire, the newspaper on the carpet, servants shut out, Mrs.
Fyne rigid in her place with the girl sitting beside her--the
"odious person," who had bustled in with hardly a greeting, looking
from Fyne to Mrs. Fyne as though he were inwardly amused at
something he knew of them; and then beginning ironically his
Chance |
