| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: For Tyranny is an incestuous Queen,
Murder her brother is her bedfellow,
And the Plague chambers with her: in obscene
And bloody paths her treacherous feet are set;
Better the empty desert and a soul inviolate!
For gentle brotherhood, the harmony
Of living in the healthful air, the swift
Clean beauty of strong limbs when men are free
And women chaste, these are the things which lift
Our souls up more than even Agnolo's
Gaunt blinded Sibyl poring o'er the scroll of human woes,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from La Grenadiere by Honore de Balzac: was a gentle look in his gray eyes; his face was pale, there was
something feminine about the child. He still wore his hair in long,
wavy curls, and his mother would not have him give up embroidered
collars, and little jackets fastened with frogs and spindle-shaped
buttons; evidently she took a thoroughly feminine pleasure in the
costume, a source of as much interest to the mother as to the child.
The elder boy's plain white collar, turned down over a closely fitting
jacket, made a contrast with his brother's clothing, but the color and
material were the same; the two brothers were otherwise dressed alike,
and looked alike.
No one could see them without feeling touched by the way in which
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Yates Pride by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: that the critical moment had come, when the quarry of suspicion
had left the bushes.
"She has adopted a baby," said she, and paused like a woman who
had fired a gun, half scared herself and shrinking from the
report.
Ethel seconded her mother. "Yes," said she, "Miss Eudora has
adopted a baby, and she has a baby-carriage, and she wheels it
out any time she takes a notion." Ethel's speech was of the
nature of an after-climax. The baby-carriage weakened the
situation.
The other women seized upon the idea of the carriage to cover
|
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 Travels of Sir John Mandeville by Sir John Mandeville: In this isle is a great river that is well a two mile and an half
of breadth that is clept Beaumare.
And from that river a fifteen journeys in length, going by the
deserts of the tother side of the river - whoso might go it, for I
was not there, but it was told us of them of the country, that
within those deserts were the trees of the sun and of the moon,
that spake to King Alexander, and warned him of his death. And men
say that the folk that keep those trees, and eat of the fruit and
of the balm that groweth there, live well four hundred year or five
hundred year, by virtue of the fruit and of the balm. For men say
that balm groweth there in great plenty and nowhere else, save only
|
