| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: from his perch, and was slapping his chest, for the night was
bitter.
'I wish you would,' said John, putting his hand to his brow
in one of his accesses of giddiness.
The man pulled at the handle, and the clanking of the bell
replied from further in the garden; twice and thrice he did
it, with sufficient intervals; in the great frosty silence of
the night the sounds fell sharp and small.
'Does he expect ye?' asked the driver, with that manner of
familiar interest that well became his port-wine face; and
when John had told him no, 'Well, then,' said the cabman, 'if
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: We would, till gloomy Winter were o'er spent,
Dispose our men in garrison a while.
But who comes here?
[Enter Copland and King David.]
DERBY.
Copland, my Lord, and David, King of Scots.
KING EDWARD.
Is this the proud presumptuous Esquire of the North,
That would not yield his prisoner to my Queen?
COPLAND.
I am, my liege, a Northern Esquire indeed,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: broke into a hundred fragments as it fell on to the floor. With
trembling lips, she defied the looks of the officer, who was
still laughing, and she stammered out, in a voice choked with
rage: "That--that--that--is not true,--for you shall certainly
not have any French women."
He sat down again, so as to laugh at his ease, and trying
ineffectually to speak in the Parisian accent, he said: "That is
good, very good! Then what did you come here for, my dear?"
She was thunderstruck, and made no reply for a moment, for in her
agitation she did not understand him at first; but as soon as she
grasped his meaning, she said to him indignantly and vehemently:
|
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 To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf: doggedly, solidly, here on the lawn. She saw her canvas as if it had
floated up and placed itself white and uncompromising directly before
her. It seemed to rebuke her with its cold stare for all this hurry
and agitation; this folly and waste of emotion; it drastically recalled
her and spread through her mind first a peace, as her disorderly
sensations (he had gone and she had been so sorry for him and she had
said nothing) trooped off the field; and then, emptiness. She looked
blankly at the canvas, with its uncompromising white stare; from the
canvas to the garden. There was something (she stood screwing up her
little Chinese eyes in her small puckered face), something she
remembered in the relations of those lines cutting across, slicing
To the Lighthouse |
