| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: Now is the time that face should form another;
Whose fresh repair if now thou not renewest,
Thou dost beguile the world, unbless some mother.
For where is she so fair whose unear'd womb
Disdains the tillage of thy husbandry?
Or who is he so fond will be the tomb,
Of his self-love to stop posterity?
Thou art thy mother's glass and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime;
So thou through windows of thine age shalt see,
Despite of wrinkles this thy golden time.
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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 The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: off the sharp contrasts and the texture of the color,--I have been
able, by caressing the outline of my figure and veiling it with cloudy
half-tints, to do away with the very idea of drawing and all other
artificial means, and give to the form the aspect and roundness of
Nature itself. Come nearer, and you will see the work more distinctly;
if too far off it disappears. See! there, at that point, it is, I
think, most remarkable." And with the end of his brush he pointed to a
spot of clear light color.
Porbus struck the old man on the shoulder, turning to Poussin as he
did so, and said, "Do you know that he is one of our greatest
painters?"
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