| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: For Hecuba?
What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,
That he should weepe for her? What would he doe,
Had he the Motiue and the Cue for passion
That I haue? He would drowne the Stage with teares,
And cleaue the generall eare with horrid speech:
Make mad the guilty, and apale the free,
Confound the ignorant, and amaze indeed,
The very faculty of Eyes and Eares. Yet I,
A dull and muddy-metled Rascall, peake
Like Iohn a-dreames, vnpregnant of my cause,
Hamlet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: Him caper upright like a wild Morisco,
Shaking the bloody darts as he his bells.
Full often, like a shag-hair'd crafty kern,
Hath he conversed with the enemy,
And undiscover'd come to me again
And given me notice of their villainies.
This devil here shall be my substitute;
For that John Mortimer, which now is dead,
In face, in gait, in speech, he doth resemble.
By this I shall perceive the commons' mind,
How they affect the house and claim of York.
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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 Dreams by Olive Schreiner: "Look down into the crevice at your feet," they said. "See what lie there-
-white bones! As brave and strong a man as you climbed to these rocks."
And he looked up. He saw there was no use in striving; he would never hold
Truth, never see her, never find her. So he lay down here, for he was very
tired. He went to sleep forever. He put himself to sleep. Sleep is very
tranquil. You are not lonely when you are asleep, neither do your hands
ache, nor your heart. And the hunter laughed between his teeth.
"Have I torn from my heart all that was dearest; have I wandered alone in
the land of night; have I resisted temptation; have I dwelt where the voice
of my kind is never heard, and laboured alone, to lie down and be food for
you, ye harpies?"
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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 The People That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: be nothing else; at home, for all her beauty, for all her
delicately tinted skin, little Ajor by her apparel, by the
habits and customs and manners of her people, by her life,
would have been classed a squaw. Tom Billings in love with
a squaw! I shuddered at the thought.
And then there came to my mind, in a sudden, brilliant flash
upon the screen of recollection the picture of Ajor as I had
last seen her, and I lived again the delicious moment in which
we had clung to one another, lips smothering lips, as I left
her to go to the council hall of Al-tan; and I could have
kicked myself for the snob and the cad that my thoughts had
The People That Time Forgot |
