| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Thy earlier days?
Prec. Yes; by the Darro's side
My childhood passed. I can remember still
The river, and the mountains capped with snow
The village, where, yet a little child,
I told the traveller's fortune in the street;
The smuggler's horse, the brigand and the shepherd;
The march across the moor; the halt at noon;
The red fire of the evening camp, that lighted
The forest where we slept; and, further back,
As in a dream or in some former life,
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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 House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: traits has wrought itself into the essence of the picture, and is
seen after the superficial coloring has been rubbed off by time.
While gazing at the portrait, Hepzibah trembled under its eye.
Her hereditary reverence made her afraid to judge the character
of the original so harshly as a perception of the truth compelled
her to do. But still she gazed, because the face of the picture
enabled her--at least, she fancied so--to read more accurately, and
to a greater depth, the face which she had just seen in the street.
"This is the very man!" murmured she to herself. "Let Jaffrey
Pyncheon smile as he will, there is that look beneath! Put on him
a skull-cap, and a band, and a black cloak, and a Bible in one
House of Seven Gables |
