| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: X.
Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely pluck'd, soon vaded,
Pluck'd in the bud, and vaded in the spring!
Bright orient pearl, alack, too timely shaded!
Fair creature, kill'd too soon by death's sharp sting!
Like a green plum that hangs upon a tree,
And falls, through wind, before the fall should he.
I weep for thee, and yet no cause I have;
For why thou left'st me nothing in thy will:
And yet thou left'st me more than I did crave;
For why I craved nothing of thee still:
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: subsidence. I may add, that the only ancient tertiary formation on the
west coast of South America, which has been bulky enough to resist such
degradation as it has as yet suffered, but which will hardly last to a
distant geological age, was certainly deposited during a downward
oscillation of level, and thus gained considerable thickness.
All geological facts tell us plainly that each area has undergone numerous
slow oscillations of level, and apparently these oscillations have affected
wide spaces. Consequently formations rich in fossils and sufficiently
thick and extensive to resist subsequent degradation, may have been formed
over wide spaces during periods of subsidence, but only where the supply of
sediment was sufficient to keep the sea shallow and to embed and preserve
On the Origin of Species |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Gambara by Honore de Balzac: poet were in frequent antagonism with his tastes, his feelings, and
his habits as a man of rank and wealth; but he comforted himself for
his inconsistencies by recognizing them in many Parisians, like
himself liberal by policy and aristocrats by nature.
Hence it was not without some uneasiness that he found himself, on
December 31, 1830, under a Paris thaw, following at the heels of a
woman whose dress betrayed the most abject, inveterate, and long-
accustomed poverty, who was no handsomer than a hundred others to be
seen any evening at the play, at the opera, in the world of fashion,
and who was certainly not so young as Madame de Manerville, from whom
he had obtained an assignation for that very day, and who was perhaps
Gambara |
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 The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson: Some of Lord Shoreby's men now cleared a passage down the middle
aisle, forcing the people back with lance-stocks; and just then,
outside the portal, the secular musicians could be descried drawing
near over the frozen snow, the fifers and trumpeters scarlet in the
face with lusty blowing, the drummers and the cymbalists beating as
for a wager.
These, as they drew near the door of the sacred building, filed off
on either side, and, marking time to their own vigorous music,
stood stamping in the snow. As they thus opened their ranks, the
leaders of this noble bridal train appeared behind and between
them; and such was the variety and gaiety of their attire, such the
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