| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence: of elms growing far beneath them, hear occasionally the gurgle of
the river. Sometimes there below they caught glimpses of the full,
soft-sliding Trent, and of water-meadows dotted with small cattle.
"It has scarcely altered since little Kirke White used to come,"
he said.
But he was watching her throat below the ear, where the flush was
fusing into the honey-white, and her mouth that pouted disconsolate.
She stirred against him as she walked, and his body was like
a taut string.
Halfway up the big colonnade of elms, where the Grove rose
highest above the river, their forward movement faltered to an end.
Sons and Lovers |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: unsuccessfulness. I do not much wonder at your absence. I know
that the unhappy are never pleasing, and that all naturally avoid
the contagion of misery. To hear complaints is wearisome alike to
the wretched and the happy; for who would cloud by adventitious
grief the short gleams of gaiety which life allows us, or who that
is struggling under his own evils will add to them the miseries of
another?
"The time is at hand when none shall be disturbed any longer by the
sighs of Nekayah: my search after happiness is now at an end. I
am resolved to retire from the world, with all its flatteries and
deceits, and will hide myself in solitude, without any other care
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