| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: Then ice-bound winter locks the fields, nor lets
The young plant fix its frozen root to earth.
Best sow your vineyards when in blushing Spring
Comes the white bird long-bodied snakes abhor,
Or on the eve of autumn's earliest frost,
Ere the swift sun-steeds touch the wintry Signs,
While summer is departing. Spring it is
Blesses the fruit-plantation, Spring the groves;
In Spring earth swells and claims the fruitful seed.
Then Aether, sire omnipotent, leaps down
With quickening showers to his glad wife's embrace,
 Georgics |
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 My Antonia by Willa Cather: we all had a sense of his utter content.
As it grew dark, I asked whether I might light the Christmas
tree before the lamp was brought. When the candle-ends sent up
their conical yellow flames, all the coloured figures from Austria
stood out clear and full of meaning against the green boughs.
Mr. Shimerda rose, crossed himself, and quietly knelt down before the tree,
his head sunk forward. His long body formed a letter `S.' I saw
grandmother look apprehensively at grandfather. He was rather narrow
in religious matters, and sometimes spoke out and hurt people's feelings.
There had been nothing strange about the tree before, but now,
with some one kneeling before it--images, candles ... Grandfather
 My Antonia |