| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Several Works by Edgar Allan Poe: maskers who venture; for the night is waning away; and there flows
a ruddier light through the blood-coloured panes; and the blackness
of the sable drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the
sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of ebony a muffled
peal more solemnly emphatic than any which reaches their ears
who indulged in the more remote gaieties of the other apartments.
But these other apartments were densely crowded, and in them
beat feverishly the heart of life. And the revel went whirlingly
on, until at length there commenced the sounding of midnight upon
the clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; and the
evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and there was an uneasy
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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 Within the Tides by Joseph Conrad: when learning business with a firm in London, years before, had
seen none but boarding-house society, he guessed. As to himself in
the good old days, when he trod the glorious flags of Fleet Street,
he neither had access to, nor yet would have cared for the swells.
Nothing interested him then but parliamentary politics and the
oratory of the House of Commons.
He paid to this not very distant past the tribute of a tender,
reminiscent smile, and returned to his first idea that for a
society girl her action was rather fine. All the same the
professor could not be very pleased. The fellow if he was as pure
as a lily now was just about as devoid of the goods of the earth.
 Within the Tides |