| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: very act of hasty cork-drawing. The sight, I may say, gave me an
awful scare. I was well aware of the morbidly sensitive nature of
the man. Fortunately, I managed to draw back unseen, and, taking
care to stamp heavily with my sea-boots at the foot of the cabin
stairs, I made my second entry. But for this unexpected glimpse,
no act of his during the next twenty-four hours could have given me
the slightest suspicion that all was not well with his nerve.
III.
Quite another case, and having nothing to do with drink, was that
of poor Captain B-. He used to suffer from sick headaches, in his
young days, every time he was approaching a coast. Well over fifty
The Mirror of the Sea |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: Enough
It is enough for me by day
To walk the same bright earth with him;
Enough that over us by night
The same great roof of stars is dim.
I do not hope to bind the wind
Or set a fetter on the sea --
It is enough to feel his love
Blow by like music over me.
Come
Come, when the pale moon like a petal
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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 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence: blackened brick and stood behind iron railings and blackened shrubs.
The Congregational chapel, which thought itself superior, was built of
rusticated sandstone and had a steeple, but not a very high one. Just
beyond were the new school buildings, expensivink brick, and gravelled
playground inside iron railings, all very imposing, and fixing the
suggestion of a chapel and a prison. Standard Five girls were having a
singing lesson, just finishing the la-me-doh-la exercises and beginning
a 'sweet children's song'. Anything more unlike song, spontaneous song,
would be impossible to imagine: a strange bawling yell that followed
the outlines of a tune. It was not like savages: savages have subtle
rhythms. It was not like animals: animals MEAN something when they
Lady Chatterley's Lover |
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 Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Out-of his veil now here, now there, with fiery glances
Beaming over the plain with rays foreboding and lurid.
"May this threatening weather," said Hermann, "not bring to us shortly
Hail and violent rain, for well does the harvest now promise."
And they both rejoiced in the corn so lofty and waving,
Well nigh reaching the heads of the two tall figures that walk'd there.
Then the maiden spoke to her friendly leader as follows
"Generous youth, to whom I shall owe a kind destiny shortly,
Shelter and home, when so many poor exiles must weather the tempest,
In the first place tell me all about your good parents,
Whom I intend to serve with all my soul from hence-forward;
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