| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Vendetta by Honore de Balzac: for months together when you went on missions. I bore your absence
courageously. Life has necessities to which we must all submit."
"Ginevra!"
"No, you don't love me for myself; your reproaches betray your
intolerable egotism."
"You dare to blame your father's love!" exclaimed Piombo, his eyes
flashing.
"Father, I don't blame you," replied Ginevra, with more gentleness
than her trembling mother expected. "You have grounds for your
egotism, as I have for my love. Heaven is my witness that no girl has
ever fulfilled her duty to her parents better than I have done to you.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: Till all men grew to rate us at our worth,
Not vassals to be beat, nor pretty babes
To be dandled, no, but living wills, and sphered
Whole in ourselves and owed to none. Enough!
But now to leaven play with profit, you,
Know you no song, the true growth of your soil,
That gives the manners of your country-women?'
She spoke and turned her sumptuous head with eyes
Of shining expectation fixt on mine.
Then while I dragged my brains for such a song,
Cyril, with whom the bell-mouthed glass had wrought,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: doing the same thing. I am sorry--sorry that my plans failed.
I hate you."
He didn't die for a half-hour after that; nor did he speak
again--aloud; but just a few seconds before he went to meet his
Maker, his lips moved in a faint whisper; and as I leaned closer
to catch his words, what do you suppose I heard? "Now--I--lay
me--down--to--sleep" That was all; Benson was dead. We threw his
body overboard.
The wind of that night brought on some pretty rough weather with
a lot of black clouds which persisted for several days. We didn't
know what course we had been holding, and there was no way of
The Land that Time Forgot |
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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: on the resounding beaches of Nukahiva, or in the shallow tepid
water on the reef of Fakarava, I have been overwhelmed by and
buried among all manner of abominable South Sea shells, beautiful
enough in their way, I make no doubt, but singular company for any
self-respecting paper-cutter. He, my master - or as I more justly
call him, my bearer; for although I occasionally serve him, does
not he serve me daily and all day long, carrying me like an African
potentate on my subject's legs? - HE is delighted with these isles,
and this climate, and these savages, and a variety of other things.
He now blows a flageolet with singular effects: sometimes the poor
thing appears stifled with shame, sometimes it screams with agony;
|
