| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Europeans by Henry James: she would have stepped upon a European steamer and turned her back,
with a kind of rapture, upon that profoundly mortifying failure,
her visit to her American relations. It is not exactly
apparent why she should have termed this enterprise a failure,
inasmuch as she had been treated with the highest distinction
for which allowance had been made in American institutions.
Her irritation came, at bottom, from the sense, which, always present,
had suddenly grown acute, that the social soil on this big,
vague continent was somehow not adapted for growing those plants whose
fragrance she especially inclined to inhale and by which she liked
to see herself surrounded--a species of vegetation for which she
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: And winding glades high up like ways to Heaven,
The slender coco's drooping crown of plumes,
The lightning flash of insect and of bird,
The lustre of the long convolvuluses
That coil'd around the stately stems, and ran
Ev'n to the limit of the land, the glows
And glories of the broad belt of the world,
All these he saw; but what he fain had seen
He could not see, the kindly human face,
Nor ever hear a kindly voice, but heard
The myriad shriek of wheeling ocean-fowl,
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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 Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: on her heart.
"He looks as if he was thinking about something--quite sorrowful,"
said Mrs. Kirk.
Suddenly, looking at him, the heavy feeling at the mother's heart
melted into passionate grief. She bowed over him, and a few tears
shook swiftly out of her very heart. The baby lifted his fingers.
"My lamb!" she cried softly.
And at that moment she felt, in some far inner place of her soul,
that she and her husband were guilty.
The baby was looking up at her. It had blue eyes like her own,
but its look was heavy, steady, as if it had realised something
Sons and Lovers |
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 Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: the wood dove would have built her nest in the trees beside it; and
singing, singing, always singing, it would have made its way at last to the
great sea, whose far-off call all waters hear.
"'But it hesitated.--It might have been, that, had but some hand been there
to move but one stone from its path, it would have forced its way past
rocks and ridges, and found its way to the great sea--it might have been!
But no hand was there. The streamlet gathered itself together, and (it
might be, that it was even in its haste to rush onwards to the sea!)--it
made one leap into the abyss.
"'The rocks closed over it. Nine hundred fathoms deep, in a still, dark
pool it lay. The green lichen hung from the rocks. No sunlight came
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