| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
THE FLY
Little Fly,
Thy summer's play
My thoughtless hand
Has brushed away.
Am not I
A fly like thee?
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: He should tell of the kind and wholesome and beautiful
elements of our life; he should tell unsparingly of the evil
and sorrow of the present, to move us with instances: he
should tell of wise and good people in the past, to excite us
by example; and of these he should tell soberly and
truthfully, not glossing faults, that we may neither grow
discouraged with ourselves nor exacting to our neighbours.
So the body of contemporary literature, ephemeral and feeble
in itself, touches in the minds of men the springs of thought
and kindness, and supports them (for those who will go at all
are easily supported) on their way to what is true and right.
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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 A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: We began our descent, now, by the most remarkable road I
have ever seen. It wound it corkscrew curves down the face
of the colossal precipice--a narrow way, with always
the solid rock wall at one elbow, and perpendicular
nothingness at the other. We met an everlasting procession
of guides, porters, mules, litters, and tourists climbing
up this steep and muddy path, and there was no room
to spare when you had to pass a tolerably fat mule.
I always took the inside, when I heard or saw the
mule coming, and flattened myself against the wall.
I preferred the inside, of course, but I should have had
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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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: would render the possessor secure. Moreover, softened and acquiescent,
the spring with her bees humming and gnats dancing threw her cloak
about her, veiled her eyes, averted her head, and among passing shadows
and flights of small rain seemed to have taken upon her a knowledge of
the sorrows of mankind.
[Prue Ramsay died that summer in some illness connected with
childbirth, which was indeed a tragedy, people said, everything, they
said, had promised so well.]
And now in the heat of summer the wind sent its spies about the house
again. Flies wove a web in the sunny rooms; weeds that had grown close
to the glass in the night tapped methodically at the window pane. When
To the Lighthouse |
