| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tono Bungay by H. G. Wells: and frequent and of a thousand hitherto unsuspected rich aspects
of life. One night in a real rapture, I walked round the upper
gallery of the Albert Hall and listened for the first time to
great music; I believe now that it was a rendering of Beethoven's
Ninth Symphony....
My apprehension of spaces and places was reinforced by a
quickened apprehension of persons. A constant stream of people
passed by me, eyes met and challenged mine and passed--more and
more I wanted then to stay--if I went eastward towards
Piccadilly, women who seemed then to my boyish inexperience
softly splendid and alluring, murmured to me as they passed.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs: the girl. He had always supposed that a princess was so
carefully guarded from fatigue and privation all her life that
the least exertion would prove her undoing; but no hardy
peasant girl could have endured more bravely the hardships
and dangers through which the Princess Emma had passed
since the sun rose that morning.
At last darkness came, and with it they approached and
entered the village. They kept to unlighted side streets until
they met a villager, of whom they inquired their way to
some private house where they might obtain refreshments.
The fellow scrutinized them with evident suspicion.
The Mad King |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon: it has not fared well with them, but within a short interval the
democratic party has been enslaved, as for instance in Boeotia;[20]
or, as when they chose the aristocrats of the Milesians, and within a
short time these revolted and cut the people to pieces; or, as when
they chose the Lacedaemonians as against the Messenians, and within a
short time the Lacedaemonians subjugated the Messenians and went to
war against Athens.
[19] I.e. "birds of a feather."
[20] The references are perhaps (1) to the events of the year 447
B.C., see Thuc. i. 113; cf. Aristot. "Pol." v. 3, 5; (2) to 440
B.C., Thuc. i. 115; Diod. xii. 27, 28; Plut. "Pericl." c. 24; (3)
|
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 Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare: That, you being dead, the day should yet be light.
'Since thou art dead, lo! here I prophesy,
Sorrow on love hereafter shall attend: 1136
It shall be waited on with jealousy,
Find sweet beginning, but unsavoury end;
Ne'er settled equally, but high or low;
That all love's pleasure shall not match his woe.
'It shall be fickle, false, and full of fraud, 1141
Bud and be blastod in a breathing-while;
The bottom poison, and the top o'erstraw'd
With sweets that shall the truest sight beguile: 1144
|
