| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: the stairs. "The baby's fallen off the settle, and got a bump as big as an
egg over his eye. Come up here, and I'll teach you!"
"It wasn't me--it wasn't me!" screamed the Child, beaten from one side of
the hall to the other, so that the potatoes and beetroot rolled out of her
skirt.
The Frau seemed to be as big as a giant, and there was a certain heaviness
in all her movements that was terrifying to anyone so small.
"Sit in the corner, and peel and wash the vegetables, and keep the baby
quiet while I do the washing."
Whimpering she obeyed, but as to keeping the baby quiet, that was
impossible. His face was hot, little beads of sweat stood all over his
|
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 Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: many women, and, through Jean Armour, to himself at last.
His humour comes from him in a stream so deep and easy that I
will venture to call him the best of humorous poets. He
turns about in the midst to utter a noble sentiment or a
trenchant remark on human life, and the style changes and
rises to the occasion. I think it is Principal Shairp who
says, happily, that Burns would have been no Scotchman if he
had not loved to moralise; neither, may we add, would he have
been his father's son; but (what is worthy of note) his
moralisings are to a large extent the moral of his own
career. He was among the least impersonal of artists.
|
