| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: The hand that spilled the wind from her sail was the hand of Reuben Paine!
He has rigged and trigged her with paint and spar,
and, faith, he has faked her well --
But I'd know the ~Stralsund~'s deckhouse yet from here to the booms o' Hell.
Oh, once we ha' met at Baltimore, and twice on Boston pier,
But the sickest day for you, Reuben Paine, was the day that you came here --
The day that you came here, my lad, to scare us from our seal
With your funnel made o' your painted cloth, and your guns o' rotten deal!
Ring and blow for the ~Baltic~ now, and head her back to the bay,
And we'll come into the game again -- with a double deck to play!"
Verses 1889-1896 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: They went in and out all day long. There was an old woman gossiping in
the kitchen; and the blinds were sucked in and out by the breeze; all
was blowing, all was growing; and over all those plates and bowls and
tall brandishing red and yellow flowers a very thin yellow veil would
be drawn, like a vine leaf, at night. Things became stiller and darker
at night. But the leaf-like veil was so fine, that lights lifted it,
voices crinkled it; he could see through it a figure stooping, hear,
coming close, going away, some dress rustling, some chain tinkling.
It was in this world that the wheel went over the person's foot.
Something, he remembered, stayed flourished up in the air, something
arid and sharp descended even there, like a blade, a scimitar, smiting
To the Lighthouse |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Turn of the Screw by Henry James: show anything. He denied," she repeated; "he denied."
Lord, how I pressed her now! "So that you could see he knew
what was between the two wretches?"
"I don't know--I don't know!" the poor woman groaned.
"You do know, you dear thing," I replied; "only you haven't
my dreadful boldness of mind, and you keep back, out of timidity
and modesty and delicacy, even the impression that, in the past,
when you had, without my aid, to flounder about in silence,
most of all made you miserable. But I shall get it out of you yet!
There was something in the boy that suggested to you," I continued,
"that he covered and concealed their relation."
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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 Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: vespers were ending in the cathedral of Tours. The archbishop Helie de
Bourdeilles was rising from his seat to give the benediction himself
to the faithful. The sermon had been long; darkness had fallen during
the service, and in certain parts of the noble church (the towers of
which were not yet finished) the deepest obscurity prevailed.
Nevertheless a goodly number of tapers were burning in honor of the
saints on the triangular candle-trays destined to receive such pious
offerings, the merit and signification of which have never been
sufficiently explained. The lights on each altar and all the
candelabra in the choir were burning. Irregularly shed among a forest
of columns and arcades which supported the three naves of the
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