| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: nearer to himself--he could see himself, real, somewhere in front.
She would go a walk with him in the afternoon. Afternoon! It seemed
years ahead.
Slowly the hours crawled. His father got up; he heard him
pottering about. Then the miner set off to the pit, his heavy
boots scraping the yard. Cocks were still crowing. A cart
went down the road. His mother got up. She knocked the fire.
Presently she called him softly. He answered as if he were asleep.
This shell of himself did well.
He was walking to the station--another mile! The train
was near Nottingham. Would it stop before the tunnels?
Sons and Lovers |
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 Maitre Cornelius by Honore de Balzac: History and romance-writers have consecrated the brown camlet coat,
and the breeches of the same stuff, worn by Louis XI. His cap,
decorated with leaden medallions, and his collar of the order of
Saint-Michel, are not less celebrated; but no writer, no painter has
represented the face of that terrible monarch in his last years,--a
sickly, hollow, yellow and brown face, all the features of which
expressed a sour craftiness, a cold sarcasm. In that mask was the
forehead of a great man, a brow furrowed with wrinkles, and weighty
with high thoughts; but in his cheeks and on his lips there was
something indescribably vulgar and common. Looking at certain details
of that countenance you would have thought him a debauched husbandman,
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