| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: taken you off to a home in Paris immediately after you had
married him. 'What a gay, bright future she has before her!'
I thought. He will, I suppose, return there with you,
if his sight gets strong again?"
Observing that she did not reply he regarded her
more closely. She was almost weeping. Images of a
future never to be enjoyed, the revived sense of her
bitter disappointment, the picture of the neighbour's
suspended ridicule which was raised by Wildeve's words,
had been too much for proud Eustacia's equanimity.
Wildeve could hardly control his own too forward feelings
Return of the Native |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Intentions by Oscar Wilde: is really not a single form that art now uses that does not come to
us from the critical spirit of Alexandria, where these forms were
either stereotyped or invented or made perfect. I say Alexandria,
not merely because it was there that the Greek spirit became most
self-conscious, and indeed ultimately expired in scepticism and
theology, but because it was to that city, and not to Athens, that
Rome turned for her models, and it was through the survival, such
as it was, of the Latin language that culture lived at all. When,
at the Renaissance, Greek literature dawned upon Europe, the soil
had been in some measure prepared for it. But, to get rid of the
details of history, which are always wearisome and usually
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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 A Start in Life by Honore de Balzac: of the house; for that individual knew nothing beyond the fact that
the Claparts paid a rent of two hundred and fifty francs a year, had
no servant but a charwoman who came daily for a few hours in the
morning, that Madame Clapart did some of her smaller washing herself,
and paid the postage on her letters daily, being apparently unable to
let the sum accumulate.
There does not exist, or rather, there seldom exists, a criminal who
is wholly criminal. Neither do we ever meet with a dishonest nature
which is completely dishonest. It is possible for a man to cheat his
master to his own advantage, or rake in for himself alone all the hay
in the manger, but, even while laying up capital by actions more or
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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 A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: A wooden spade they gave to me
To dig the sandy shore.
My holes were empty like a cup.
In every hole the sea came up,
Till it could come no more.
IV
Young Night-Thought
All night long and every night,
When my mama puts out the light,
I see the people marching by,
As plain as day before my eye.
A Child's Garden of Verses |
