| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: she crouched on the hearthrug near his feet. The glow was warm
on her handsome, pensive face as she kneeled there like a devotee.
"What did you think of Mrs. Dawes?" she asked quietly.
"She doesn't look very amiable," he replied.
"No, but don't you think she's a fine woman?" she said,
in a deep tone,
"Yes--in stature. But without a grain of taste. I like her
for some things. IS she disagreeable?"
"I don't think so. I think she's dissatisfied."
"What with?"
"Well--how would you like to be tied for life to a man like that?"
Sons and Lovers |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Saw the rainbow in the heaven,
In the eastern sky, the rainbow,
Whispered, "What is that, Nokomis?"
And the good Nokomis answered:
"'T is the heaven of flowers you see there;
All the wild-flowers of the forest,
All the lilies of the prairie,
When on earth they fade and perish,
Blossom in that heaven above us."
When he heard the owls at midnight,
Hooting, laughing in the forest,
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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 Purse by Honore de Balzac: restless when Hippolyte did not come, she scolded him so
effectually for his absence, that the painter had to give up
seeing his other friends, and now went nowhere. Adelaide allowed
the natural jealousy of women to be perceived when she heard that
sometimes at eleven o'clock, on quitting the house, the painter
still had visits to pay, and was to be seen in the most brilliant
drawing-rooms of Paris. This mode of life, she assured him, was
bad for his health; then, with the intense conviction to which
the accent, the emphasis and the look of one we love lend so much
weight, she asserted that a man who was obliged to expend his
time and the charms of his wit on several women at once could not
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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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: had death, as it were, at his door, and many even in their families, and
knew not what to do or whither to fly.
This, I say, took away all compassion; self-preservation, indeed,
appeared here to be the first law. For the children ran away from their
parents as they languished in the utmost distress. And in some places,
though not so frequent as the other, parents did the like to their
children; nay, some dreadful examples there were, and particularly
two in one week, of distressed mothers, raving and distracted, killing
their own children; one whereof was not far off from where I dwelt,
the poor lunatic creature not living herself long enough to be sensible
of the sin of what she had done, much less to be punished for it.
A Journal of the Plague Year |
