| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne: of death around him, while the black veil hung down, awful, at
that last moment, in the gathered terrors of a lifetime. And yet
the faint, sad smile, so often there, now seemed to glimmer from
its obscurity, and linger on Father Hooper's lips.
"Why do you tremble at me alone?" cried he, turning his veiled
face round the circle of pale spectators. "Tremble also at each
other! Have men avoided me, and women shown no pity, and children
screamed and fled, only for my black veil? What, but the mystery
which it obscurely typifies, has made this piece of crape so
awful? When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the
lover to his best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from
 Twice Told Tales |
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 Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: "But (for we far have wander'd) let us seek
The forward path again; so as the way
Be shorten'd with the time. No mortal tongue
Nor thought of man hath ever reach'd so far,
That of these natures he might count the tribes.
What Daniel of their thousands hath reveal'd
With finite number infinite conceals.
The fountain at whose source these drink their beams,
With light supplies them in as many modes,
As there are splendours, that it shines on: each
According to the virtue it conceives,
 The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |