| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare: here, and I will sing that they shall heare I am not afraid.
The Woosell cocke, so blacke of hew,
With Orenge-tawny bill.
The Throstle, with his note so true,
The Wren and little quill
Tyta. What Angell wakes me from my flowry bed?
Bot. The Finch, the Sparrow, and the Larke,
The plainsong Cuckow gray;
Whose note full many a man doth marke,
And dares not answere, nay.
For indeede, who would set his wit to so foolish a bird?
A Midsummer Night's Dream |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe
to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose
that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the
providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued
through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, and that he
gives to both North and South this terrible war, as the woe due
to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any
departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a
living God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope--fervently
do we pray--that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by
Second Inaugural Address |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: of town business and the whirlwind of town pleasure, could not be
better spent than in examining those wonders a little, instead of
wandering up and down like the many, still wrapt up each in his
little world of vanity and self-interest, unconscious of what and
where they really are, as they gaze lazily around at earth and sea
and sky, and have
"No speculation in those eyes
Which they do glare withal"?
Why not, then, try to discover a few of the Wonders of the Shore?
For wonders there are there around you at every step, stranger than
ever opium-eater dreamed, and yet to be seen at no greater expense
|
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 Ebb-Tide by Stevenson & Osbourne: marked in itself, and so remarkable in the man who uttered
them that Huish stared, and even the humiliated Davis reared
up his head and gazed at his defender. As for Herrick, the
successive agitations and disappointments of the day had left
him wholly reckless; he was conscious of a pleasant glow, an
agreeable excitement; his head seemed empty, his eyeballs
burned as he turned them, his throat was dry as a biscuit; the
least dangerous man by nature, except in so far as the weak are
always dangerous, at that moment he was ready to slay or to be
slain with equal unconcern.
Here at least was the gage thrown down, and battle offered;
|
