| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: were warm in the frost and had comfort in the desert. But Mrs McNab
continued to drink and gossip as before.
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The Spring without a leaf to toss, bare and bright like a virgin fierce
in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid out on fields wide-
eyed and watchful and entirely careless of what was done or thought by
the beholders. [Prue Ramsay, leaning on her father's arm, was given in
marriage. What, people said, could have been more fitting? And, they
added, how beautiful she looked!]
As summer neared, as the evenings lengthened, there came to the
wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beach, stirring the pool,
To the Lighthouse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare: Come; who begins?
PALAMON.
Ev'n he that led you to this Banket shall
Taste to you all.--Ah ha, my Friend, my Friend,
Your gentle daughter gave me freedome once;
You'l see't done now for ever: pray, how do'es she?
I heard she was not well; her kind of ill
Gave me some sorrow.
IAILOR.
Sir, she's well restor'd,
And to be marryed shortly.
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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 Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbot: I. My Lord, your own wisdom has taught me to aspire to One
even more great, more beautiful, and more closely approximate
to Perfection than yourself. As you yourself, superior to all
Flatland forms, combine many Circles in One, so doubtless there is One
above you who combines many Spheres in One Supreme Existence,
surpassing even the Solids of Spaceland. And even as we,
who are now in Space, look down on Flatland and see the insides
of all things, so of a certainty there is yet above us some higher,
purer region, whither thou dost surely purpose to lead me --
O Thou Whom I shall always call, everywhere and in all Dimensions,
my Priest, Philosopher, and Friend -- some yet more spacious Space,
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions |
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 Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead,
who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power
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