| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: Made new by walls of moving mist receding
The more we follow. . . . What a silver night!
That was our bench the time you said to me
The long new poem -- but how different now,
How eerie with the curtain of the fog
Making it strange to all the friendly trees!
There is no wind, and yet great curving scrolls
Carve themselves, ever changing, in the mist.
Walk on a little, let me stand here watching
To see you, too, grown strange to me and far. . . .
I used to wonder how the park would be
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories by Alice Dunbar: LITTLE MISS SOPHIE
When Miss Sophie knew consciousness again, the long, faint,
swelling notes of the organ were dying away in distant echoes
through the great arches of the silent church, and she was alone,
crouching in a little, forsaken black heap at the altar of the
Virgin. The twinkling tapers shone pityingly upon her, the
beneficent smile of the white-robed Madonna seemed to whisper
comfort. A long gust of chill air swept up the aisles, and Miss
Sophie shivered not from cold, but from nervousness.
But darkness was falling, and soon the lights would be lowered,
and the great massive doors would be closed; so, gathering her
The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from From London to Land's End by Daniel Defoe: (call it as you please), we come into a large country without many
towns in it of note, but very well furnished with gentlemen's
seats, and a little higher up with tin-works.
The sea making several deep bays here, they who travel by land are
obliged to go higher into the country to pass above the water,
especially at Trewardreth Bay, which lies very broad, above ten
miles within the country, which passing at Trewardreth (a town of
no great note, though the bay takes its name from it), the next
inlet of the sea is the famous firth or inlet called Falmouth
Haven. It is certainly, next to Milford Haven in South Wales, the
fairest and best road for shipping that is in the whole isle of
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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 The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: than once; and since the Bhagat showed no fear, Sona showed no
anger, but watched him, and came closer, and begged a share of
the caresses, and a dole of bread or wild berries. Often, in the
still dawns, when the Bhagat would climb to the very crest of
the pass to watch the red day walking along the peaks of the
snows, he would find Sona shuffling and grunting at his heels,
thrusting, a curious fore-paw under fallen trunks, and bringing
it away with a WHOOF of impatience; or his early steps would
wake Sona where he lay curled up, and the great brute, rising
erect, would think to fight, till he heard the Bhagat's voice
and knew his best friend.
The Second Jungle Book |
