| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: The pealing of bells is lost in a drive of rain-drops.
Remote and hurried the great bells beat.
'I am the one whom life so shrewdly betrayed,
Misfortune dogs me, it always hunted me down.
And to-day the woman I love lies dead.
I gave her roses, a ring with opals;
These hands have touched her head.
'I bound her to me in all soft ways,
I bound her to me in a net of days,
Yet now she has gone in silence and said no word.
How can we face these dazzling things, I ask you?
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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 Rig Veda: the
Bounteous, helped us with his lustre,
Wherewith our sires of old who knew the footsteps found light
and
stole the cattle from the mountain.
40 In the first vault of heaven loud roared the Ocean, King
of all
being, generating creatures.
Steer, in the filter, on the fleecy summit, Soma, the Drop
effused,
hath waxen mighty.
The Rig Veda |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The White Moll by Frank L. Packard: room:
"Meet de moll I was tellin' youse about, Mag. She's white - all de
way up. She's white, Mag; she's a white moll - take it from me."
The White Moll!
The firm little chin came suddenly upward; but into the dark eyes
unbidden came a sudden film and mist. Her father's health had been
too far undermined, and he bad been unable to withstand the shock
of the operation, and he had died in the hospital. There weren't
any relatives, except distant ones on her mother's side, somewhere
out in California, whom she had never seen. She and her father
had been all in all to each other, chums, pals, comrades, since her
|
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 Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: elderly merchant and his wife, who were returning to Boston in
the carriage. While the coachman and a servant were replacing the
wheel, the lady and gentleman sheltered themselves beneath the
maple-trees, and there espied the bubbling fountain, and David
Swan asleep beside it. Impressed with the awe which the humblest
sleeped usually sheds around him, the merchant trod as lightly as
the gout would allow; and his spouse took good heed not to rustle
her silk gown, lest David should start up all of a sudden.
"How soundly he sleeps!" whispered the old gentleman. "From what
a depth he draws that easy breath! Such sleep as that, brought on
without an opiate, would be worth more to me than half my income;
Twice Told Tales |
