| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling:
"My basking sunfish know it, and wheeling albatross,
Where the lone wave fills with fire beneath the Southern Cross.
What is the Flag of England? Ye have but my reefs to dare,
Ye have but my seas to furrow. Go forth, for it is there!"
The East Wind roared: -- "From the Kuriles, the Bitter Seas, I come,
And me men call the Home-Wind, for I bring the English home.
Look -- look well to your shipping! By the breath of my mad typhoon
I swept your close-packed Praya and beached your best at Kowloon!
Verses 1889-1896 |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Amy Foster by Joseph Conrad: incomprehensible, and of a mysterious origin, in
some obscure corner of the earth. Yet amongst all
the adventurers shipwrecked in all the wild parts of
the world there is not one, it seems to me, that ever
had to suffer a fate so simply tragic as the man I
am speaking of, the most innocent of adventurers
cast out by the sea in the bight of this bay, almost
within sight from this very window.
"He did not know the name of his ship. Indeed,
in the course of time we discovered he did not even
know that ships had names--'like Christian peo-
Amy Foster |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart beating
faster than usual, as if with an agreeable excitement to which my
mind remained a stranger. But as soon as my eyelids touched, that
subtle glue leaped between them, and they would no more come
separate. The wind among the trees was my lullaby. Sometimes it
sounded for minutes together with a steady, even rush, not rising
nor abating; and again it would swell and burst like a great
crashing breaker, and the trees would patter me all over with big
drops from the rain of the afternoon. Night after night, in my own
bedroom in the country, I have given ear to this perturbing concert
of the wind among the woods; but whether it was a difference in the
|
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 Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: There is something sinister to a seaman in the very grouping of the
letters which form this word, clear in its meaning, and seldom
threatening in vain.
Only a very few days more - appallingly few to the hearts which had
set themselves bravely to hope against hope - three weeks, a month
later, perhaps, the name of ships under the blight of the "Overdue"
heading shall appear again in the column of "Shipping
Intelligence," but under the final declaration of "Missing."
"The ship, or barque, or brig So-and-so, bound from such a port,
with such and such cargo, for such another port, having left at
such and such a date, last spoken at sea on such a day, and never
The Mirror of the Sea |
