| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Amid the throng, the turmoil here,
Confined the plain, the breezes e'en appear.
CHORUS.
Now order it truly,
That ev'ry one duly
May roam and may wander,
Now here, and now yonder,
The meadows along.
[The Chorus retreats gradually, and the song becomes fainter and
fainter, till it dies away in the distance.]
DAMON.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: and gave the order to admit the Prince.
CHAPTER VI - THE PRINCE DELIVERS A LECTURE ON MARRIAGE, WITH
PRACTICAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF DIVORCE
WITH what a world of excellent intentions Otto entered his wife's
cabinet! how fatherly, how tender! how morally affecting were the
words he had prepared! Nor was Seraphina unamiably inclined. Her
usual fear of Otto as a marplot in her great designs was now
swallowed up in a passing distrust of the designs themselves. For
Gondremark, besides, she had conceived an angry horror. In her
heart she did not like the Baron. Behind his impudent servility,
behind the devotion which, with indelicate delicacy, he still forced
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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 Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates by Howard Pyle: got her safely away, only that having to put on sail, their
mainmast went by the board, whereupon the men-of-war came up with
them, and the prize was lost.
But even though there were two men-of-war against all that
remained of six-and-twenty buccaneers, the Spaniards were glad
enough to make terms with them for the surrender of the vessel,
whereby Pierre Francois and his men came off scot-free.
Bartholomew Portuguese was a worthy of even more note. In a boat
manned with thirty fellow adventurers he fell upon a great ship
off Cape Corrientes, manned with threescore and ten men, all
told.
Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates |
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 Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs: of miles of space and eons of time separated us from our past
lives and habitations.
"There is no reason why we should carry our racial and political
hatreds into Caprona," I insisted. "The Germans among us might
kill all the English, or the English might kill the last German,
without affecting in the slightest degree either the outcome of
even the smallest skirmish upon the western front or the opinion
of a single individual in any belligerent or neutral country.
I therefore put the issue squarely to you all; shall we bury our
animosities and work together with and for one another while we
remain upon Caprona, or must we continue thus divided and but half
The Land that Time Forgot |
