| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: In every bole, a song on every spray
Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke
Desire in me to infuse my tale of love
In the old king's ears, who promised help, and oozed
All o'er with honeyed answer as we rode
And blossom-fragrant slipt the heavy dews
Gathered by night and peace, with each light air
On our mailed heads: but other thoughts than Peace
Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares,
And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers
With clamour: for among them rose a cry
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Hated Son by Honore de Balzac: sudden lights, the sensations caused by his father's speech, joined to
those he was already feeling, overcame the young man, who fainted
completely and fell into a chair, leaving his slender womanly hand in
the broad palm of his father. As the duke, who had signed to the
lieutenant of his company to come nearer, saying to him, "I am
fortunate, Baron d'Artagnon, in being able to repair my loss; behold
my son!" he felt an icy hand in his. Turning round, he looked at the
new Duc de Nivron, and, thinking him dead, he uttered a cry of horror
which appalled the assemblage.
Beauvouloir rushed to the platform, took the young man in his arms,
and carried him away, saying to his master, "You have killed him by
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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 Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: were recognised, and the young were generally reared by their
parents.
Resemblances to human attitudes and institutions were,
of course, most marked in those fields where on the one hand highly
abstract elements were concerned, or where on the other hand there
was a dominance of the basic, unspecialised urges common to all
organic life. A few added likenesses came through conscious adoption
as the Great Race probed the future and copied what it liked.
Industry, highly mechanised, demanded but little time from each
citizen; and the abundant leisure was filled with intellectual
and aesthetic activities of various sorts.
Shadow out of Time |
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 Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: communications, but were received with a shower of arrows, and had to
fly back to the station for dear life. That attempt set the country up
and down the river into an uproar that could be very distinctly heard
for days. The steamer was late. At first they spoke of delay jauntily,
then anxiously, then gloomily. The matter was becoming serious. Stores
were running short. Carlier cast his lines off the bank, but the river
was low, and the fish kept out in the stream. They dared not stroll
far away from the station to shoot. Moreover, there was no game in the
impenetrable forest. Once Carlier shot a hippo in the river. They had
no boat to secure it, and it sank. When it floated up it drifted away,
and Gobila's people secured the carcase. It was the occasion for a
Tales of Unrest |
