| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: Who 'gibbered in the Roman streets,'
Dressed, if you recollect, in sheets -
They must have found it cold.
"I've often spent ten pounds on stuff,
In dressing as a Double;
But, though it answers as a puff,
It never has effect enough
To make it worth the trouble.
"Long bills soon quenched the little thirst
I had for being funny.
The setting-up is always worst:
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: punishments, but the secret of hearts alone shall return, forever
unknown, to the Inscrutable Creator of good and evil, to the Master of
doubts and impulses.
He stood still to look at her. Thrown back and with her face turned
away from him, she did not stir--as if asleep. What did she think?
What did she feel? And in the presence of her perfect stillness, in
the breathless silence, he felt himself insignificant and powerless
before her, like a prisoner in chains. The fury of his impotence
called out sinister images, that faculty of tormenting vision, which
in a moment of anguishing sense of wrong induces a man to mutter
threats or make a menacing gesture in the solitude of an empty room.
Tales of Unrest |
