| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: Of tawny gold and mauve and misted turquoise
Under the tall and darkened arches bearing
Gray, high-flung bridges.
Against the sunset, water-towers and steeples
Flickered with fire up the slope to westward,
And old warehouses poured their purple shadows
Across the levee.
High over them the black train swept with thunder,
Cleaving the city, leaving far beneath it
Wharf-boats moored beside the old side-wheelers
Resting in twilight.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Summer by Edith Wharton: stricken with shame at her own childish savagery. What
would Harney have thought if he had witnessed it? But
when she turned the incident over in her puzzled mind
she could not imagine what a civilized person would
have done in her place. She felt herself too unequally
pitted against unknown forces....
At length this feeling moved her to sudden action. She
took a sheet of letter paper from Mr. Royall's office,
and sitting by the kitchen lamp, one night after Verena
had gone to bed, began her first letter to Harney. It
was very short:
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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 A Prince of Bohemia by Honore de Balzac: the language (let us hope), and yet it is the only one which conveys
an idea of the spirit of Bohemia.
"So we often used to joke about Claudine and the Count--'/Toujours
Claudine?/' sung to the air of /Toujours Gessle/.--'What are you
making of Claudine?'--'How is Claudine?'
" 'I wish you all such a mistress, for all the harm I wish you,' La
Palferine began one day. 'No greyhound, no basset-dog, no poodle can
match her in gentleness, submissiveness, and complete tenderness.
There are times when I reproach myself, when I take myself to task for
my hard heart. Claudine obeys with saintly sweetness. She comes to me,
I tell her to go, she goes, she does not even cry till she is out in
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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 War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy: pretty. She struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and
beauty, combined with her indifference to everything about her. Her
black eyes looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her
delicate arm, bare to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the
box, while, evidently unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in
time to the music, crumpling her program. "Look, there's Alenina,"
said Sonya, "with her mother, isn't it?"
"Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!" remarked
the count.
"Look at our Anna Mikhaylovna- what a headdress she has on!"
"The Karagins, Julie- and Boris with them. One can see at once
War and Peace |
