| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: them, and told them that they had found - Tom Jeffry: they all ran
up to the place, where they found the poor fellow hanging up naked
by one arm, and his throat cut. There was an Indian house just by
the tree, where they found sixteen or seventeen of the principal
Indians, who had been concerned in the fray with us before, and two
or three of them wounded with our shot; and our men found they were
awake, and talking one to another in that house, but knew not their
number.
The sight of their poor mangled comrade so enraged them, as before,
that they swore to one another that they would be revenged, and
that not an Indian that came into their hands should have any
Robinson Crusoe |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: The Tiger
My Pretty Rose-Tree
Ah, Sunflower
The Lily
The Garden of Love
The Little Vagabond
London
The Human Abstract
Infant Sorrow
A Poison Tree
A Little Boy Lost
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Underground City by Jules Verne: "Ay, a long way from the Dochart pit."
"A long way, Simon? Where do you mean to live?"
"Even here, Mr. Starr! We're not going to leave the mine,
our good old nurse, just because her milk is dried up!
My wife, my boy, and myself, we mean to remain faithful to her!"
"Good-by then, Simon," replied the engineer, whose voice,
in spite of himself, betrayed some emotion.
"No, I tell you, it's TILL WE MEET AGAIN, Mr. Starr,
and not Just 'good-by,'" returned the foreman. "Mark my words,
Aberfoyle will see you again!"
The engineer did not try to dispel the man's illusion. He
|
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 Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: White's poems. It is the burden of the plaintive songs of all
these sweet albino-poets. "I shall die and be forgotten, and the
world will go on just as if I had never been; - and yet how I have
loved! how I have longed! how I have aspired!" And so singing,
their eyes grow brighter and brighter, and their features thinner
and thinner, until at last the veil of flesh is threadbare, and,
still singing, they drop it and pass onward.
- Our brains are seventy-year clocks. The Angel of Life winds them
up once for all, then closes the case, and gives the key into the
hand of the Angel of the Resurrection.
Tic-tac! tic-tac! go the wheels of thought; our will cannot stop
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
