| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Facino Cane by Honore de Balzac: There was something great, something too of the despot about this old
Homer bearing within him an /Odyssey/ doomed to oblivion. The
greatness was so real that it triumphed over his abject position; the
despotism so much a part of him, that it rose above his poverty.
There are violent passions which drive a man to good or evil, making
of him a hero or a convict; of these there was not one that had failed
to leave its traces on the grandly-hewn, lividly Italian face. You
trembled lest a flash of thought should suddenly light up the deep
sightless hollows under the grizzled brows, as you might fear to see
brigands with torches and poniards in the mouth of a cavern. You felt
that there was a lion in that cage of flesh, a lion spent with useless
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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 Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: afternoon of the sixth day.
The renowned hill whereon the annual fair had been held for
so many generations was now bare of human beings, and almost
of aught besides. A few sheep grazed thereabout, but these
ran off when Henchard halted upon the summit. He deposited
his basket upon the turf, and looked about with sad
curiosity; till he discovered the road by which his wife and
himself had entered on the upland so memorable to both,
five-and-twenty years before.
"Yes, we came up that way," he said, after ascertaining his
bearings. "She was carrying the baby, and I was reading a
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
