| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: any one who seemed to exist on such "large draughts of
intellectual day" as this child of seventeen, to whom one could
tell all one's personal troubles and agitations, as to a wise old
woman. In the East, maturity comes early; and this child had
already lived through all a woman's life. But there was
something else, something hardly personal, something which
belonged to a consciousness older than the Christian, which I
realised, wondered at, and admired, in her passionate
tranquillity of mind, before which everything mean and trivial
and temporary caught fire and burnt away in smoke. Her body was
never without suffering, or her heart without conflict; but
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: towards Lochnagar, and between the knolls of them, are scattered
streams, as it were, of great round boulder stones--which are not
serpentine, but granite from the top of Lochnagar, five miles
away. And you will see that the knolls of serpentine rock, or at
least their backs and shoulders towards Lochnagar, are all
smoothed and polished till they are as round as the backs of
sheep, "roches moutonnees," as the French call ice-polished rocks;
and then, if you understand what that means, you will say, as I
said, "I am perfectly certain that this great basin between me and
Lochnagar, which is now 3000 feet deep of empty air was once
filled up with ice to the height of the hills on which I stand--
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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 To-morrow by Joseph Conrad: by the reckless shadow waiting under the wall of
her home.
"Anything. Enough of a sailor to be worth
my salt before the mast. Came home that way this
time."
"Where do you come from?" she asked.
"Right away from a jolly good spree," he said,
"by the London train--see? Ough! I hate being
shut up in a train. I don't mind a house so
much."
"Ah," she said; "that's lucky."
To-morrow |
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 House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: and even lovely, with sorrowful affection; the harshness of her
features disappeared, as it were, behind the warm and misty glow.
"Angry! she repeated; "angry with you, Clifford!"
Her tone, as she uttered the exclamation, had a plaintive and really
exquisite melody thrilling through it, yet without subduing a certain
something which an obtuse auditor might still have mistaken for asperity.
It was as if some transcendent musician should draw a soul-thrilling
sweetness out of a cracked instrument, which makes its physical imperfection
heard in the midst of ethereal harmony,--so deep was the sensibility that
found an organ in Hepzibah's voice!
"There is nothing but love, here, Clifford," she added,--"nothing
House of Seven Gables |
