| 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: O riven lute and writhen strings,
Dead bough whereto no blossom clings,
The glory was ephemeral!
Nor may our Autumn grief recall
The passion of the perished Springs
Time steals from Love!
THE RONDEAU
YOUR rondeau's tale must still be light--
No bugle-call to life's stern fight!
Rather a smiling interlude
Memorial to some transient mood
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Travels and Researches in South Africa by Dr. David Livingstone: formerly [email protected]). To assure a high quality text,
the original was typed in (manually) twice and electronically compared.
[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are CAPITALIZED.
Some obvious errors have been corrected.]
Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa.
Also called, Travels and Researches in South Africa;
or, Journeys and Researches in South Africa.
By David Livingstone [British (Scot) Missionary and Explorer--1813-1873.]
David Livingstone was born in Scotland, received his medical degree
from the University of Glasgow, and was sent to South Africa
by the London Missionary Society. Circumstances led him to try to meet
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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 Modeste Mignon by Honore de Balzac: equal imagination? The young girls of the poets are so ideal that
no living daughter of Eve can compete with them. And now tell me,
what will you gain,--you, a young girl, brought up to be the
virtuous mother of a family,--if you learn to comprehend the
terrible agitations of a poet's life in this dreadful capital,
which may be defined by one sentence,--the hell in which men love.
If the desire to brighten the monotonous existence of a young girl
thirsting for knowledge has led you to take your pen in hand and
write to me, has not the step itself the appearance of
degradation? What meaning am I to give to your letter? Are you one
of a rejected caste, and do you seek a friend far away from you?
Modeste Mignon |
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 Criminal Sociology by Enrico Ferri: instance, that crime is nothing else than a purely and exclusively
social phenomenon in the evolution of which the organic and
psychical anomalies of the criminal have had no part, ignore more
or less consciously the universal correlation of natural forces,
and forget that, in regard to any phenomenon whatsoever, it is
impossible to set an absolute limit to the network of its causes,
immediate and remote, direct and indirect.
To put this question in an arbitrary sense would be like
asking if a mammal is the product of its lungs, or its heart, or
its stomach, or of vegetable constituents, or of the atmosphere;
whereas each of these conditions, internal and external, is
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