| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: An Alp enchanted. All the day
You hear the exuberant wind at play,
In vast, unbroken voice uplift,
In roaring tree, round whistling clift.
AIR OF DIABELLI'S
CALL it to mind, O my love.
Dear were your eyes as the day,
Bright as the day and the sky;
Like the stream of gold and the sky above,
Dear were your eyes in the grey.
We have lived, my love, O, we have lived, my love!
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: And so, in the dark valley into which his path had taken its
unlooked-for twist, he wondered not a little as he groped. He
didn't care what awful crash might overtake him, with what ignominy
or what monstrosity he might yet he associated--since he wasn't
after all too utterly old to suffer--if it would only be decently
proportionate to the posture he had kept, all his life, in the
threatened presence of it. He had but one desire left--that he
shouldn't have been "sold."
CHAPTER IV
Then it was that, one afternoon, while the spring of the year was
young and new she met all in her own way his frankest betrayal of
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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 Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde: came over his face.
"I am all expectation, Basil," continued his companion,
glancing at him.
"Oh, there is really very little to tell, Harry," answered the painter;
"and I am afraid you will hardly understand it. Perhaps you will hardly
believe it."
Lord Henry smiled, and leaning down, plucked a pink-petalled daisy from
the grass and examined it. "I am quite sure I shall understand it,"
he replied, gazing intently at the little golden, white-feathered disk,
"and as for believing things, I can believe anything, provided that it is
quite incredible."
The Picture of Dorian Gray |
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 Father Goriot by Honore de Balzac: go to her this evening, will you not?"
"Oh! yes. I must go out; I have some urgent business on hand."
"Can I be of any use?"
"My word, yes! Will you go to old Taillefer's while I go to Mme.
de Nucingen? Ask him to make an appointment with me some time
this evening; it is a matter of life and death."
"Really, young man!" cried Father Goriot, with a change of
countenance; "are you really paying court to his daughter, as
those simpletons were saying down below? . . . TONNERRE DE DIEU!
you have no notion what a tap A LA GORIOT is like, and if you are
playing a double game, I shall put a stop to it by one blow of
Father Goriot |
