| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: stream working the mass into a firmness, and washing down fresh mud.
This, settling there, became an accession of matter, as well as cement,
to the rubbish, insomuch that the violence of the waters could not
remove it, but forced and compressed it all together. Thus its bulk and
solidity gained it new subsidies, which gave it extension enough to stop
on its way most of what the stream brought down. This is now a sacred
island, lying by the city, adorned with temples of the gods, and walks,
and is called in the Latin tongue inter duos pontes. Though some say
this did not happen at the dedication of Tarquin's field, but in after-
times, when Tarquinia, a vestal priestess, gave an adjacent field to the
public, and obtained great honors in consequence, as, amongst the rest,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Malbone: An Oldport Romance by Thomas Wentworth Higginson: hard enough.
He knew it was not merely mercenary motives that had made
Emilia accept John Lambert; but what troubled him was a vague
knowledge that it was not mere pique. He was used to dealing
with pique in women, and had found it the most manageable of
weaknesses. It was an element of spasmodic conscience than he
saw here, and it troubled him.
Something told him that she had said to herself: "I will be
married, and thus do my duty to Hope. Other girls marry
persons whom they do not love, and it helps them to forget.
Perhaps it will help me. This is a good man, they say, and I
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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 'Twixt Land & Sea by Joseph Conrad: foot or two above water. In the daytime, I dare say, you might
make it out with a glass from your poop. I scrambled up on it and
rested myself for a bit. Then I made another start. That last
spell must have been over a mile."
His whisper was getting fainter and fainter, and all the time he
stared straight out through the port-hole, in which there was not
even a star to be seen. I had not interrupted him. There was
something that made comment impossible in his narrative, or perhaps
in himself; a sort of feeling, a quality, which I can't find a name
for. And when he ceased, all I found was a futile whisper: "So
you swam for our light?"
'Twixt Land & Sea |
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 Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
The river sweats
Oil and tar
The barges drift
With the turning tide
Red sails 270
Wide
To leeward, swing on the heavy spar.
The barges wash
Drifting logs
The Waste Land |
