| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: that we have never seen one of her features. The walker in the
familiar fields which stretch around my native town sometimes
finds himself in another land than is described in their owners'
deeds, as it were in some faraway field on the confines of the
actual Concord, where her jurisdiction ceases, and the idea which
the word Concord suggests ceases to be suggested. These farms
which I have myself surveyed, these bounds which I have set up,
appear dimly still as through a mist; but they have no chemistry
to fix them; they fade from the surface of the glass, and the
picture which the painter painted stands out dimly from beneath.
The world with which we are commonly acquainted leaves no trace,
Walking |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: And the age changed unto a mimic play
Wherein we waste our else too-crowded hours:
For all our pomp and pageantry and powers
We are but fit to delve the common clay,
Seeing this little isle on which we stand,
This England, this sea-lion of the sea,
By ignorant demagogues is held in fee,
Who love her not: Dear God! is this the land
Which bare a triple empire in her hand
When Cromwell spake the word Democracy!
ON THE MASSACRE OF THE CHRISTIANS IN BULGARIA
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: cost her, she said, untold difficulty to send these few things to her
daughter; she entreated her not to think her hard if, henceforth, she
were forced to abandon her to want; she feared she could never again
assist her; but she blessed her and prayed for her happiness in this
fatal marriage, if, indeed, she persisted in making it, assuring her
that she should never cease to think of her darling child. Here the
falling tears had effaced some words of the letter.
"Oh, mother!" cried Ginevra, deeply moved.
She felt the impulse to rush home, to breathe the blessed air of her
father's house, to fling herself at his feet, to see her mother. She
was springing forward to accomplish this wish, when Luigi entered. At
|
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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: Lighthouse; that he was sorry he had said "Damn you." But no. He did
not like to see her look so sad, he said. Only wool gathering, she
protested, flushing a little. They both felt uncomfortable, as if they
did not know whether to go on or go back. She had been reading fairy
tales to James, she said. No, they could not share that; they could
not say that.
They had reached the gap between the two clumps of red-hot pokers, and
there was the Lighthouse again, but she would not let herself look at
it. Had she known that he was looking at her, she thought, she would
not have let herself sit there, thinking. She disliked anything that
reminded her that she had been seen sitting thinking. So she looked
To the Lighthouse |
