| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: Still upward, upward without sound of flight?
Shall I not find your turrets toward the north,
Where you defied white winter armed for war;
Your southern casements where the sun blows in
Between the leaf-bent boughs the wind has lifted?
Shall we not see the sunrise toward the east,
Watch dawn by dawn the rose of day unfolding
Its golden-hearted beauty sovereignly;
And toward the west look quietly at evening?
Shall I not see all these and all your treasures?
In carven coffers hidden in the dark
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie: wife with little attentions, placing a cushion at her back, and
altogether playing the part of the devoted husband. Immediately
after supper, Mrs. Inglethorp retired to her boudoir again.
"Send my coffee in here, Mary," she called. "I've just five
minutes to catch the post."
Cynthia and I went and sat by the open window in the
drawing-room. Mary Cavendish brought our coffee to us. She
seemed excited.
"Do you young people want lights, or do you enjoy the twilight?"
she asked. "Will you take Mrs. Inglethorp her coffee, Cynthia? I
will pour it out."
The Mysterious Affair at Styles |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Seraphita by Honore de Balzac: the post-house of the journey. A lifetime may be needed merely to gain
the virtues which annul the errors of man's preceding life. First
comes the life of suffering, whose tortures create a thirst for love.
Next the life of love and devotion to the creature, teaching devotion
to the Creator,--a life where the virtues of love, its martyrdoms, its
joys followed by sorrows, its angelic hopes, its patience, its
resignation, excite an appetite for things divine. Then follows the
life which seeks in silence the traces of the Word; in which the soul
grows humble and charitable. Next the life of longing; and lastly, the
life of prayer. In that is the noonday sun; there are the flowers,
there the harvest!
Seraphita |
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 Alcibiades I by Plato: by some master, or he must have discovered the nature of them himself. If
he has had a master, Socrates would like to be informed who he is, that he
may go and learn of him also. Alcibiades admits that he has never learned.
Then has he enquired for himself? He may have, if he was ever aware of a
time when he was ignorant. But he never was ignorant; for when he played
with other boys at dice, he charged them with cheating, and this implied a
knowledge of just and unjust. According to his own explanation, he had
learned of the multitude. Why, he asks, should he not learn of them the
nature of justice, as he has learned the Greek language of them? To this
Socrates answers, that they can teach Greek, but they cannot teach justice;
for they are agreed about the one, but they are not agreed about the other:
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