| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: From the front door an irregular series of rough and misshapen
steps, cut in the solid rock, led down to the edge of the
streamlet, which, at their extremity, was hollowed into a basin
through which the water trickled. This was evidently the means of
water supply to the dweller or dwellers in the cottage.
A light footstep was heard descending from the higher slopes of
the hillside. Indistinct in the pathway appeared a moving female
shape, who advanced and knocked timidly at the door. No answer
being returned the knock was repeated, with the same result, and
it was then repeated a third time. This also was unsuccessful.
From one of the only two windows on the ground floor which were
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
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: as she could. It was a place flanked by hay-barns, into
which tons of fodder, all in trusses, were being packed from
the waggons she had seen pass the inn that morning. On
other sides of the yard were wooden granaries on stone
staddles, to which access was given by Flemish ladders, and
a store-house several floors high. Wherever the doors of
these places were open, a closely packed throng of bursting
wheat-sacks could be seen standing inside, with the air of
awaiting a famine that would not come.
She wandered about this place, uncomfortably conscious of
the impending interview, till she was quite weary of
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
