| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Ere she had yielded up her sweets, or known
The joy of passion, that dread mystery
Which not to know is not to live at all,
And yet to know is to be held in death's most deadly thrall.
But as it hapt the Queen of Cythere,
Who with Adonis all night long had lain
Within some shepherd's hut in Arcady,
On team of silver doves and gilded wain
Was journeying Paphos-ward, high up afar
From mortal ken between the mountains and the morning star,
And when low down she spied the hapless pair,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Salammbo by Gustave Flaubert: his master. The others quivered with indignation at such baseness.
But the Greek raised his voice and spoke for a long time in rapid,
insidious, and even violent fashion, setting forth the crimes of
Hanno, whom he knew to be Barca's enemy, and striving to move
Hamilcar's pity by the details of their miseries and the recollection
of their devotion; in the end he became forgetful of himself, being
carried away by the warmth of his temper.
Hamilcar replied that he accepted their excuses. Peace, then, was
about to be concluded, and now it would be a definitive one! But he
required that ten Mercenaries, chosen by himself, should be delivered
up to him without weapons or tunics.
Salammbo |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: with gid.
This is a mood, however, that comes to me now, I thank God,
more rarely. I have withdrawn myself from the confusion of cities
and multitudes, and spend my days surrounded by wise books,--
bright windows in this life of ours, lit by the shining souls of men.
I see few strangers, and have but a small household.
My days I devote to reading and to experiments in chemistry,
and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy.
There is--though I do not know how there is or why there is--a sense
of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven.
There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter,
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
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 Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Licence who steals the gold of Liberty
And yet has nothing, Ignorance the real
One Fraticide since Cain, Envy the asp
That stings itself to anguish, Avarice whose palsied grasp
Is in its extent stiffened, moneyed Greed
For whose dull appetite men waste away
Amid the whirr of wheels and are the seed
Of things which slay their sower, these each day
Sees rife in England, and the gentle feet
Of Beauty tread no more the stones of each unlovely street.
What even Cromwell spared is desecrated
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