| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: a great and good man.]
TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING
The pages of thy book I read,
And as I closed each one,
My heart, responding, ever said,
"Servant of God! well done!"
Well done! Thy words are great and bold;
At times they seem to me,
Like Luther's, in the days of old,
Half-battles for the free.
Go on, until this land revokes
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Macbeth by William Shakespeare: Not i'th' worst ranke of Manhood, say't,
And I will put that Businesse in your Bosomes,
Whose execution takes your Enemie off,
Grapples you to the heart; and loue of vs,
Who weare our Health but sickly in his Life,
Which in his Death were perfect
2.Murth. I am one, my Liege,
Whom the vile Blowes and Buffets of the World
Hath so incens'd, that I am recklesse what I doe,
To spight the World
1.Murth. And I another,
Macbeth |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: along the path on his way to one of the gates. This brought him
close, and his pace, was slow, so that--and all the more as there
was a kind of hunger in his look--the two men were for a minute
directly confronted. Marcher knew him at once for one of the
deeply stricken--a perception so sharp that nothing else in the
picture comparatively lived, neither his dress, his age, nor his
presumable character and class; nothing lived but the deep ravage
of the features that he showed. He SHOWED them--that was the
point; he was moved, as he passed, by some impulse that was either
a signal for sympathy or, more possibly, a challenge to an opposed
sorrow. He might already have been aware of our friend, might at
|
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 Firm of Nucingen by Honore de Balzac: be understood. Comes there an echo from thy waistcoat-pocket, Blondet?
Between ourselves, let the heart alone, it spoils the intellect.
"Let us resume. Godefroid de Beaudenord was respected by his
tradespeople, for they were paid with tolerable regularity. The witty
woman before quoted--I cannot give her name, for she is still living,
thanks to her want of heart----"
"Who is this?"
"The Marquise d'Espard. She said that a young man ought to live on an
entresol; there should be no sign of domesticity about the place; no
cook, no kitchen, an old manservant to wait upon him, and no pretence
of permanence. In her opinion, any other sort of establishment is bad
|
