| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: To dazzle him that dared to gaze!
Alack-a-day for poverty:
My rhymes are all you get of me!
Yet, if your heart receive, behold!
The worthless words are set in gold.
SILVIA
I STILL remember how she moved
Among the rathe, wild blooms she loved,
(When Spring came tip-toe down the slopes,
Atremble 'twixt her doubts and hopes,
Half fearful and all virginal)--
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: what he now professes. As for science proper, it has reached at his
hands only the quasimorphologic stage; that is, it consists of
catalogues concocted according to the ingenuity of the individual
and resembles the real thing about as much as a haphazard
arrangement of human bones might be expected to resemble a man.
Not only is the spirit of the subject left out altogether, but the
mere outward semblance is misleading. For pseudo-scientific
collections of facts which never rise to be classifications of
phenomena forms to his idea the acme of erudition. His mathematics,
for example, consists of a set of empiric rules, of which no
explanation is ever vouchsafed the taught for the simple reason that
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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 The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Chapter I
The Affair on the Liner
"Magnifique!" ejaculated the Countess de Coude, beneath
her breath.
"Eh?" questioned the count, turning toward his young wife.
"What is it that is magnificent?" and the count bent his eyes
in various directions in quest of the object of her admiration.
"Oh, nothing at all, my dear," replied the countess, a slight
flush momentarily coloring her already pink cheek. "I was but
recalling with admiration those stupendous skyscrapers, as
they call them, of New York," and the fair countess settled
The Return of Tarzan |
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 Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: 'T may be, again to make me wander thither:
'Wander,' a word for shadows like myself,
As take the pain, but cannot pluck the pelf.
XV.
Lord, how mine eyes throw gazes to the east!
My heart doth charge the watch; the morning rise
Doth cite each moving sense from idle rest.
Not daring trust the office of mine eyes,
While Philomela sits and sings, I sit and mark,
And wish her lays were tuned like the lark;
For she doth welcome daylight with her ditty,
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