| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Between those people and me. But somehow,
As time went on, there came queer glances
Out of their eyes, and the shame that stung me
Harassed my pride with a crazed impression
That every face in the surging city
Was turned to me; and I saw sly whispers,
Now and then, as I walked and wearied
My wasted life twice over in bearing
With all my sorrow the sorrows of others, --
Till I found myself their fool. Then I trembled, --
A poor scared thing, -- and their prying faces
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson:
Treasure Island |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: What scanty hundreds more or less
In the man-devouring Wilderness?
What handful bled on Delhi ridge?
- See, rather, London, on thy bridge
The pale battalions trample by,
Resolved to slay, resigned to die.
Count, rather, all the maimed and dead
In the unbrotherly war of bread.
See, rather, under sultrier skies
What vegetable Londons rise,
And teem, and suffer without sound:
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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 Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: and find immediate consolation in some pursuit,
or some train of thought at hand. Her plants, her books--
of which she had been a collector from the first hour
of her commanding a shilling--her writing-desk, and her
works of charity and ingenuity, were all within her reach;
or if indisposed for employment, if nothing but musing
would do, she could scarcely see an object in that room
which had not an interesting remembrance connected with it.
Everything was a friend, or bore her thoughts to a friend;
and though there had been sometimes much of suffering
to her; though her motives had often been misunderstood,
Mansfield Park |
