| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: "Then Re-echoed "Hylas, Hylas! soothed
Pasiphae with the love of her white bull-
Happy if cattle-kind had never been!-
O ill-starred maid, what frenzy caught thy soul
The daughters too of Proetus filled the fields
With their feigned lowings, yet no one of them
Of such unhallowed union e'er was fain
As with a beast to mate, though many a time
On her smooth forehead she had sought for horns,
And for her neck had feared the galling plough.
O ill-starred maid! thou roamest now the hills,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas: There was no doubt, then, that this lieutenant of musketeers
had heard all that passed in his majesty's apartment.
Warned by the last words of the young king, he came out just
in time to salute him on his passage, and to follow him with
his eyes till he had disappeared in the corridor.
Then as soon as he had disappeared, he shook his head after
a fashion peculiarly his own, and in a voice which forty
years' absence from Gascony had not deprived of its Gascon
accent, "A melancholy service," said he, "and a melancholy
master!"
These words pronounced, the lieutenant resumed his place in
Ten Years Later |
