| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Rape of Lucrece by William Shakespeare: My woes are tedious, though my words are brief.'
Here folds she up the tenor of her woe,
Her certain sorrow writ uncertainly.
By this short schedule Collatine may know
Her grief, but not her grief's true quality;
She dares not thereof make discovery,
Lest he should hold it her own gross abuse,
Ere she with blood had stain'd her stain'd excuse.
Besides, the life and feeling of her passion
She hoards, to spend when he is by to hear her;
When sighs, and groans, and tears may grace the fashion
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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 Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: Graham back, and pleading for self-control. As we stood thus,
panting and confused, on the edge of the cliff, a singing
voice floated up to us from the shadows across the valley. It
was Herrick's song again:
A heart as soft, a heart as kind,
A heart as sound and free
Is in the whole world thou canst find,
That heart I'll give to thee.
"Come, gentlemen," I cried, "this is folly, sheer madness.
You can never deal with the matter in this way. Think of the
girl who is singing down yonder. What would happen to her,
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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 Madame Firmiani by Honore de Balzac: and much astuteness about whom shrewd provincials are wont to remark,
"No lawsuits for me with him!") had, as it were by accident, come to
visit Monsieur de Bourbonne, and INCIDENTALLY informed him of his
nephew's ruin. Monsieur Octave de Camps, he said, having wasted his
means on a certain Madame Firmiani, was now reduced to teaching
mathematics for a living, while awaiting his uncle's death, not daring
to let him know of his dissipations. This distant cousin, a sort of
Charles Moor, was not ashamed to give this fatal news to the old
gentleman as he sat by his fire, digesting a profuse provincial
dinner.
[*] The "Bande Noire" was a mysterious association of speculators,
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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 Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: own horse from the tree under which it had been tied.
Oak's eyes could not forsake them; and in en-
deavouring to continue his shearing at the same time
that he watched Boldwood's manner, he snipped the
sheep in the groin. The animal plunged; Bathsheba
instantly gazed towards it, and saw the blood.
"O, Gabriel!" she exclaimed, with severe remon-
strance you who are so strict with the other men -- see
what you are doing yourself!"
To an outsider there was not much to complain of
in this remark; but to Oak, who "knew Bathsheba to be
Far From the Madding Crowd |
