| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving: Let it suffice to say, Ichabod stole forth with the air of
one who had been sacking a henroost, rather than a fair lady's
heart. Without looking to the right or left to notice the scene
of rural wealth, on which he had so often gloated, he went
straight to the stable, and with several hearty cuffs and kicks
roused his steed most uncourteously from the comfortable quarters
in which he was soundly sleeping, dreaming of mountains of corn
and oats, and whole valleys of timothy and clover.
It was the very witching time of night that Ichabod, heavy
hearted and crest-fallen, pursued his travels homewards, along
the sides of the lofty hills which rise above Tarry Town, and
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: fearlessly over your visit with you. But now my life is very much
changed. I cannot do as I like, I am obliged to think. What brings you
here? Is it curiosity? In that case I am paying dearly for a little
fleeting pleasure. Have you fallen /passionately/ in love already with
a woman whom you have never seen, a woman with whose name slander has,
of course, been busy? If so, your motive in making this visit is based
on disrespect, on an error which accident brought into notoriety."
She flung her book down scornfully upon the table, then, with a
terrible look at Gaston, she went on: "Because I once was weak, must
it be supposed that I am always weak? This is horrible, degrading. Or
have you come here to pity me? You are very young to offer sympathy
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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 Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: Set free the maiden white like snow.
And many skies have covered me,
And many winds have blown me forth,
And I have loved the green bright north,
And I have loved the cold sweet sea.
But what to me are north and south,
And what the lure of many lands,
Since you have leaned to catch my hands
And lay a kiss upon my mouth.
I Would Live in Your Love
I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea,
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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 Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: November 1867, how those falling stars, as I told you then, were
coming out of boundless space, colder than any ice on earth, and
yet, simply by pressing against the air above our heads, they had
their motion turned into heat, till they burned themselves up into
trains of fiery dust. So remember that wherever you have pressure
you have heat, and that the pressure of the upper rocks upon the
lower is quite enough, some think, to account for the older and
lower rocks being harder than the upper and newer ones.
But why should the lower rocks be older and the upper rocks newer?
You told me just now that the high mountains in Wales were ages
older than Windsor Forest, upon which we stand: but yet how much
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