| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: It stares through the window-pane;
It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light,
And it moves with the moving flame.
Now my little heart goes a beating like a drum,
With the breath of the Bogies in my hair;
And all around the candle and the crooked shadows come,
And go marching along up the stair.
The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp,
The shadow of the child that goes to bed--
All the wicked shadows coming tramp, tramp, tramp,
With the black night overhead.
A Child's Garden of Verses |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Drama on the Seashore by Honore de Balzac: of the inner life takes place only at a certain age. That age, which
for all men lies between twenty-two and twenty-eight, is the period of
great thoughts, of fresh conceptions, because it is the age of immense
desires. After that age, short as the seed-time, comes that of
execution. There are, as it were, two youths,--the youth of belief,
the youth of action; these are often commingled in men whom Nature has
favored and who, like Caesar, like Newton, like Bonaparte, are the
greatest among great men.
I was measuring how long a time it might take a thought to develop.
Compass in hand, standing on a rock some hundred fathoms above the
ocean, the waves of which were breaking on the reef below, I surveyed
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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 The Contrast by Royall Tyler: going to marry the man of your choice--what trum-
pery notion is this? It is these vile books [throwing
them away]. I'd have you to know, Mary, if you
won't make young Van Dumpling the man of your
choice, you shall marry him as the man of my choice.
MARIA
You terrify me, Sir. Indeed, Sir, I am all submission.
My will is yours.
VAN ROUGH
Why, that is the way your mother us'd to talk.
"My will is yours, my dear Mr. Van Rough, my will
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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 Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Whereupon it made this threne
To the phoenix and the dove,
Co-supreme and stars of love;
As chorus to their tragic scene.
THRENOS.
Beauty, truth, and rarity.
Grace in all simplicity,
Here enclos'd in cinders lie.
Death is now the phoenix' nest;
And the turtle's loyal breast
To eternity doth rest,
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