| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: "Well, the woman will be better off," said another of a more
deliberative turn. "For seafaring natures be very good
shelter for shorn lambs, and the man do seem to have plenty
of money, which is what she's not been used to lately, by
all showings."
"Mark me--I'll not go after her!" said the trusser,
returning doggedly to his seat. "Let her go! If she's up to
such vagaries she must suffer for 'em. She'd no business to
take the maid--'tis my maid; and if it were the doing again
she shouldn't have her!"
Perhaps from some little sense of having countenanced an
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: But he felt he had to conceal something from her, and it irked him.
There was a certain silence between them, and he felt he had,
in that silence, to defend himself against her; he felt condemned
by her. Then sometimes he hated her, and pulled at her bondage.
His life wanted to free itself of her. It was like a circle where life
turned back on itself, and got no farther. She bore him, loved him,
kept him, and his love turned back into her, so that he could not
be free to go forward with his own life, really love another woman.
At this period, unknowingly, he resisted his mother's influence.
He did not tell her things; there was a distance between them.
Clara was happy, almost sure of him. She felt she had at last
Sons and Lovers |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Chouans by Honore de Balzac: were out of hearing and Marche-a-Terre had seen the Blues at the foot
of the declivity, he gave the owl's cry joyously, and the Chouans
reappeared, but their numbers were less. Some were no doubt busy in
taking care of the wounded in the little village of La Pelerine,
situated on the side of the mountain which looks toward the valley of
Couesnon. Two or three chiefs of what were called the "Chasseurs du
Roi" clustered about Marche-a-Terre. A few feet apart sat the young
noble called The Gars, on a granite rock, absorbed in thoughts excited
by the difficulties of his enterprise, which now began to show
themselves. Marche-a-Terre screened his forehead with his hand from
the rays of the sun, and looked gloomily at the road by which the
The Chouans |
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 The Riverman by Stewart Edward White: rivermen thereupon made their uncertain way back to shore, where
they took the river trail up stream again to their respective posts.
At noon they ate lunches they had brought with them in little canvas
bags, snatched before they left the rollways from a supply handy by
the cook. In the meantime the main crew were squatting in the lea
of the brush, devouring a hot meal which had been carried to them in
wooden boxes strapped to the backs of the chore boys. Down the
river and up its tributaries other crews, both in the employ of
Newmark and Orde and of others, were also pausing from their cold
and dangerous toil. The river, refreshed after its long winter,
bent its mighty back to the great annual burden laid upon it.
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