| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Sign of the Cat & Racket by Honore de Balzac: there through little openings left by her movements in sleep. No
expression of embarrassment detracted from the candor of her face, or
the calm look of eyes immortalized long since in the sublime works of
Raphael; here were the same grace, the same repose as in those
Virgins, and now proverbial. There was a delightful contrast between
the cheeks of that face on which sleep had, as it were, given high
relief to a superabundance of life, and the antiquity of the heavy
window with its clumsy shape and black sill. Like those day-blowing
flowers, which in the early morning have not yet unfurled their cups,
twisted by the chills of night, the girl, as yet hardly awake, let her
blue eyes wander beyond the neighboring roofs to look at the sky;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: to be dressed as lions or bears. The wise old goose, with his
modest grey mate, pecked at the green grass or turned his head
from side to side, watching the singing clown, who rolled up the
painted carcass and long neck of the imitation giraffe from which
two property men had just slipped, their legs still encased in
stripes.
Ambitious canvas-men and grooms were exercising, feet in air, in
the hope of some day getting into the performers' ring. Property
men stole a minute's sleep in the soft warm grass while they
waited for more tackle to load in the wagons. Children of the
performers were swinging on the tent ropes, chattering monkeys
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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 Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: Portrait of a Lady
Preludes
Rhapsody on a Windy Night
Morning at the Window
The Boston Evening Transcript
Aunt Helen
Cousin Nancy
Mr. Apollinax
Hysteria
Conversation Galante
La Figlia Che Piange
Prufrock/Other Observations |
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 Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: Thy edge should blunter be than appetite,
Which but to-day by feeding is allay'd,
To-morrow sharpened in his former might:
So, love, be thou, although to-day thou fill
Thy hungry eyes, even till they wink with fulness,
To-morrow see again, and do not kill
The spirit of love, with a perpetual dulness.
Let this sad interim like the ocean be
Which parts the shore, where two contracted new
Come daily to the banks, that when they see
Return of love, more blest may be the view;
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