| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Camille by Alexandre Dumas: Comte de N., who seemed proud of showing her off, as if he said
to everybody: "This woman is mine."
I leaned against the mantel-piece just opposite Marguerite and
watched her dancing. Her face changed the moment she caught sight
of me. I saluted her casually with a glance of the eyes and a
wave of the hand.
When I reflected that after the ball she would go home, not with
me but with that rich fool, when I thought of what would follow
their return, the blood rose to my face, and I felt the need of
doing something to trouble their relations.
After the contredanse I went up to the mistress of the house, who
Camille |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: See, where the bonfire sputters red
At even, for the innocent dead.
Why prate of peace? when, warriors all,
We clank in harness into hall,
And ever bare upon the board
Lies the necessary sword.
In the green field or quiet street,
Besieged we sleep, beleaguered eat;
Labour by day and wake o' nights,
In war with rival appetites.
The rose on roses feeds; the lark
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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 Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: from far away, the musical wail of the sloth, or the deep toll of
the bell-bird, came softly to the ear. What was not there which
eye or ear could need? And what which palate could need either?
For on the rock above, some strange tree, leaning forward, dropped
every now and then a luscious apple upon the grass below, and huge
wild plantains bent beneath their load of fruit.
There, on the stream bank, lay the two renegades from civilized
life. They had cast away their clothes, and painted themselves,
like the Indians, with arnotto and indigo. One lay lazily picking
up the fruit which fell close to his side; the other sat, his back
against a cushion of soft moss, his hands folded languidly upon his
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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 Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe: scarcely intelligible nature had always existed between them.
Our glances, however, rested not long upon the dead--for we could
not regard her unawed. The disease which had thus entombed the
lady in the maturity of youth, had left, as usual in all maladies
of a strictly cataleptical character, the mockery of a faint
blush upon the bosom and the face, and that suspiciously
lingering smile upon the lip which is so terrible in death. We
replaced and screwed down the lid, and, having secured the door
of iron, made our way, with toil, into the scarcely less gloomy
apartments of the upper portion of the house.
And now, some days of bitter grief having elapsed, an
The Fall of the House of Usher |
