| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: Alas! alas! my lord is dead.
O LITTLE BRIDE, WHY DOST THOU WEEP
WITH ALL THE HAPPY WORLD ASLEEP?
Alas! alas! my lord is dead!
Ah, who will stay these hungry tears,
Or still the want of famished years,
And crown with love my marriage-bed?
My soul burns with the quenchless fire
That lit my lover's funeral pyre:
Alas! alas! my lord is dead.
VILLAGE-SONG
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Lily of the Valley by Honore de Balzac: Rance a Trappist. I, who hoped to remain ever beautiful and noble in
your memory, to live there eternally a lily, I it is who destroy your
illusions! True love cannot calculate. But stay; do not go, stay.
Monsieur Origet said I was much better this morning; I shall recover.
Your looks will bring me back to life. When I regain a little
strength, when I can take some nourishment, I shall be beautiful
again. I am scarcely thirty-five, there are many years of happiness
before me,--happiness renews our youth; yes, I must know happiness! I
have made delightful plans,--we will leave Clochegourde and go to
Italy."
Tears filled my eyes and I turned to the window as if to look at the
The Lily of the Valley |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Jolly Corner by Henry James: shades and the parts at the back. But if he sometimes, on his
rounds, was glad of his optical reach, so none the less often the
rear of the house affected him as the very jungle of his prey. The
place was there more subdivided; a large "extension" in particular,
where small rooms for servants had been multiplied, abounded in
nooks and corners, in closets and passages, in the ramifications
especially of an ample back staircase over which he leaned, many a
time, to look far down - not deterred from his gravity even while
aware that he might, for a spectator, have figured some solemn
simpleton playing at hide-and-seek. Outside in fact he might
himself make that ironic RAPPROCHEMENT; but within the walls, and
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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 Eve and David by Honore de Balzac: the world may speak, and we let them speak.
"Our poor, dear David is in prison, madame," so began Petit-Claud. "I
foresaw all along that it would end in this. I advised him at the time
to go into partnership with his competitors the Cointets; for while
your husband has simply the idea, they have the means of putting it
into practical shape. So as soon as I heard of his arrest yesterday
evening, what did I do but hurry away to find the Cointets and try to
obtain such concessions as might satisfy you. If you try to keep the
discovery to yourselves, you will continue to live a life of shifts
and chicanery. You must give in, or else when you are exhausted and at
the last gasp, you will end by making a bargain with some capitalist
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