| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Selected Writings of Guy De Maupassant by Guy De Maupassant: to yield to the pressure of new customs with a kind of contempt.
"It was the month of May: the spreading apple-trees covered the
court with a whirling shower of blossoms which rained unceasingly
both upon people and upon the grass.
"I said:
" 'Well, Madame Lecacheur, have you a room for me?'
"Astonished to find that I knew her name, she answered:
" 'That depends; everything is let; but, all the same, there will
be no harm in looking.'
"In five minutes we were in perfect accord, and I deposited my
bag upon the bare floor of a rustic room, furnished with a bed,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: British Museum; and near them, probably, specimens of the new-old
Crinoids, discovered of late years by Professor Sars, Mr. Gwyn
Jeffreys, Dr. Carpenter, Dr. Wyville Thomson, and the other deep-
sea disciples of the mythic Glaucus, the fisherman, who, enamoured
of the wonders of the sea, plunged into the blue abyss once and for
all, and became himself "the blue old man of the sea."
Next look at the corals, and Gorgonias, and all the sea-fern tribe
of branching polypidoms, and last, but not least, at the glass
sponges; first at the Euplectella, or Venus's flower-basket, which
lives embedded in the mud of the seas of the Philippines, supported
by a glass frill "standing up round it like an Elizabethan ruff."
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: labours of many generations of kings through long ages. It was for the
most part rectangular and oblong, and where falling out of the straight
line followed the circular ditch. The depth, and width, and length of this
ditch were incredible, and gave the impression that a work of such extent,
in addition to so many others, could never have been artificial.
Nevertheless I must say what I was told. It was excavated to the depth of
a hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was carried
round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length. It
received the streams which came down from the mountains, and winding round
the plain and meeting at the city, was there let off into the sea. Further
inland, likewise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut from
|
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 A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: Thoughtless and selfish, her Master was I.
Oh, the long nights that she came at my call to
me!
Oh, the soft touch of her hands on my brow!
Oh, the long years that she gave up her all to
me!
Oh, how I yearn for her gentleness now!
Slave to her baby! Yes, that was the way of
her,
Counting her greatest of services small;
Words cannot tell what this old heart would
A Heap O' Livin' |
