| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton: and he met the young man's question with another.
"What is your object in speaking to me of this?"
He had not to wait a moment for the answer. "To
beg you, Monsieur--to beg you with all the force I'm
capable of--not to let her go back.--Oh, don't let
her!" M. Riviere exclaimed.
Archer looked at him with increasing astonishment.
There was no mistaking the sincerity of his distress or
the strength of his determination: he had evidently
resolved to let everything go by the board but the
supreme need of thus putting himself on record. Archer
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: But the wind comes whispering in between,
In the dead of night when the sky is deep
The wind comes waking me out of sleep--
Why does it always bring to me
The far-off, terrible call of the sea?
THE CLOUD
I AM a cloud in the heaven's height,
The stars are lit for my delight,
Tireless and changeful, swift and free,
I cast my shadow on hill and sea--
But why do the pines on the mountain's crest
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: fifth shot did I sink, and I rose in time to hear a boatman
telling all those white women that I was most certainly dead.
One bullet had gone under a neck-plate of mine. I know not if it
is there still, for the reason I cannot turn my head. Look and
see, child. It will show that my tale is true."
"I?" said the Jackal. "Shall an eater of old shoes, a bone-
cracker, presume, to doubt the word of the Envy of the River?
May my tail be bitten off by blind puppies if the shadow of such
a thought has crossed my humble mind! The Protector of the Poor
has condescended to inform me, his slave, that once in his life
he has been wounded by a woman. That is sufficient, and I will
The Second Jungle Book |
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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: flaring up to be drunk and quenched by the beak of brass, the arid
scimitar of the male, which smote mercilessly, again and again,
demanding sympathy.
He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing her
needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at
James himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh,
her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across a dark room
assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full; the
garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him;
however deep he buried himself or climed high, not for a second should he
find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and
To the Lighthouse |
