| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: If our ways are not wholly worse
Than others, for not being hers, --
There might somehow be found a few
Less insane things for us to do,
And we might have a little heed
Of what Belshazzar couldn't read.
She feels, with all our furniture,
Room yet for something more secure
Than our self-kindled aureoles
To guide our poor forgotten souls;
But when we have explained that grace
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: senses than one. We had come as far as the roast, however, and still
we had no neighbors; no sound came from the next room save the
crackling of the fire. But when the clock struck eight, we heard
voices and noisy footsteps; the waiters brought candles. Evidently
there was a party assembled in the next room, and at the first words I
knew at once with whom we had to do--four bold cormorants as ever
sprang from the foam on the crests of the ever-rising waves of this
present generation--four pleasant young fellows whose existence was
problematical, since they were not known to possess either stock or
landed estates, yet they lived, and lived well. These ingenious
condottieri of a modern industrialism, that has come to be the most
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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 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: other man. But she was going as a sort of discipline: and also because,
if she had a child, Clifford could think she had a lover in Venice.
It was already May, and in June they were supposed to start. Always
these arrangements! Always one's life arranged for one! Wheels that
worked one and drove one, and over which one had no real control!
It was May, but cold and wet again. A cold wet May, good for corn and
hay! Much the corn and hay matter nowadays! Connie had to go into
Uthwaite, which was their little town, where the Chatterleys were still
THEChatterleys. She went alone, Field driving her.
In spite of May and a new greenness, the country was dismal. It was
rather chilly, and there was smoke on the rain, and a certain sense of
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
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 Alkahest by Honore de Balzac: silver. The four windows were draped by wide curtains of red damask
with a flowered black design, lined with white silk; the furniture,
covered with the same material, had been renovated in the time of
Louis XIV. The floor, evidently modern, was laid in large squares of
white wood bordered with strips of oak. The ceiling, formed of many
oval panels, in each of which Van Huysum had carved a grotesque mask,
had been respected and allowed to keep the brown tones of the native
Dutch oak.
In the four corners of this parlor were truncated columns, supporting
candelabra exactly like those on the mantle-shelf; and a round table
stood in the middle of the room. Along the walls card-tables were
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