| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: combination of rotten wood, and musty straw, and ragged garments,
that it was compelled to show itself a man, in spite of the
reality of things. So it stepped into the bar of sunshine. There
it stood, poor devil of a contrivance that it was!--with only the
thinnest vesture of human similitude about it, through which was
evident the stiff, rickety, incongruous, faded, tattered,
good-for-nothing patchwork of its substance, ready to sink in a
heap upon the floor, as conscious of its own unworthiness to be
erect. Shall I confess the truth? At its present point of
vivification, the scarecrow reminds me of some of the lukewarm
and abortive characters, composed of heterogeneous materials,
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: To amorous Phillida. Why art thou heere
Come from the farthest steepe of India?
But that forsooth the bouncing Amazon
Your buskin'd Mistresse, and your Warrior loue,
To Theseus must be Wedded; and you come,
To giue their bed ioy and prosperitie
Ob. How canst thou thus for shame Tytania.
Glance at my credite, with Hippolita?
Knowing I know thy loue to Theseus?
Didst thou not leade him through the glimmering night
From Peregenia, whom he rauished?
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: yellow as marigolds, corduroys immaculate as new flax, and a
neckerchief like a flower-garden. Now he wore the remains
of an old blue cloth suit of his gentlemanly times, a rusty
silk hat, and a once black satin stock, soiled and shabby.
Clad thus he went to and fro, still comparatively an active
man--for he was not much over forty--and saw with the other
men in the yard Donald Farfrae going in and out the green
door that led to the garden, and the big house, and Lucetta.
At the beginning of the winter it was rumoured about
Casterbridge that Mr. Farfrae, already in the Town Council,
was to be proposed for Mayor in a year or two.
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
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 Forged Coupon by Leo Tolstoy: tered your name when he went off at a gallop
with the greatest enthusiasm, firing off the list of
your perfections left and right, and so long as he
declaimed your praises with gesticulations, cut
and thrust, powder and shot, it was all very well
and quite in character; but seeing that I listened
with interest and attention my man took the bit
in his teeth, and flung himself into a psychic apoth-
eosis. On reaching full pitch he began to get
muddled, and floundered so helplessly in his own
phrases! all the while chewing an excellent cutlet
The Forged Coupon |
