| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: She smoothes her hair with automatic hand,
And puts a record on the gramophone.
'This music crept by me upon the waters'
And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street.
O City city, I can sometimes hear
Beside a public bar in Lower Thames Street, 260
The pleasant whining of a mandoline
And a clatter and a chatter from within
Where fishmen lounge at noon: where the walls
Of Magnus Martyr hold
Inexplicable splendour of Ionian white and gold.
The Waste Land |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Two Poets by Honore de Balzac: noble, or at any rate by old burgher, families, who live independently
on their incomes--a sort of autochthonous nation who suffer no aliens
to come among them. Possibly, after two hundred years of unbroken
residence, and it may be an intermarriage or two with one of the
primordial houses, a family from some neighboring district may be
adopted, but in the eyes of the aboriginal race they are still
newcomers of yesterday.
Prefects, receivers-general, and various administrations that have
come and gone during the last forty years, have tried to tame the
ancient families perched aloft like wary ravens on their crag; the
said families were always willing to accept invitations to dinners and
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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 Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: Will knew no answer. To laugh at the poor fellow was easy enough;
to deny that he was right, that he was a hero and cavalier,
outdoing romance itself in faithfulness, not so easy; and Cary, in
the first impulse, wished him at the bottom of the bay for shaming
him. Of course, his own plan of letting ill alone was the
rational, prudent, irreproachable plan, and just what any gentleman
in his senses would have done; but here was a vulgar, fat curate,
out of his senses, determined not to let ill alone, but to do
something, as Cary felt in his heart, of a far diviner stamp.
"Well," said Jack, in his stupid steadfast way, "it's a very bad
look-out; but mother's pretty well off, if father dies, and the
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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 The Odyssey by Homer: wedded to the best man of the Achaeans.'
So spake Antinous, and the saying pleased them well, and
each man sent a henchman to bring his gifts. For Antinous
his henchman bare a broidered robe, great and very fair,
wherein were golden brooches, twelve in all, fitted with
well bent clasps. And the henchman straightway bare
Eurymachus a golden chain of curious work, strung with
amber beads, shining like the sun. And his squires bare for
Eurydamas a pair of ear-rings, with three drops well
wrought, and much grace shone from them. And out of the
house of Peisander the prince, the son of Polyctor, the
The Odyssey |
