| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: drops from the rain of the afternoon. Night after night, in my own
bedroom in the country, I have given ear to this perturbing concert
of the wind among the woods; but whether it was a difference in the
trees, or the lie of the ground, or because I was myself outside
and in the midst of it, the fact remains that the wind sang to a
different tune among these woods of Gevaudan. I hearkened and
hearkened; and meanwhile sleep took gradual possession of my body
and subdued my thoughts and senses; but still my last waking effort
was to listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one
of wonder at the foreign clamour in my ears.
Twice in the course of the dark hours - once when a stone galled me
|
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: Then he toiled day and night to make the dyke, and ever by
night Flumen came and strove with him, and did his power to
cast him down and strangle him. But Martimor stood fast and
drave him back.
And at last, as they wrestled and whapped together, they
fell headlong in the stream.
"Ho-o!" shouted Flumen, "now will I drown thee, and mar
the Mill and the Maid."
But Martimor gripped him by the neck and thrust his head
betwixt the leaves of the gate and shut them fast, so that his
eyes stood out like gobbets of foam, and his black tongue hung
|
