| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: QUEEN ELIZABETH.
I am inform'd that he comes towards London,
To set the crown once more on Henry's head.
Guess thou the rest: King Edward's friends must down;
But to prevent the tyrant's violence,--
For trust not him that hath once broken faith,--
I'll hence forthwith unto the sanctuary,
To save at least the heir of Edward's right.
There shall I rest secure from force and fraud.
Come therefore, let us fly while we may fly;
If Warwick take us, we are sure to die.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Georgics by Virgil: And stream-washed vales my solace, let me love
Rivers and woods, inglorious. Oh for you
Plains, and Spercheius, and Taygete,
By Spartan maids o'er-revelled! Oh, for one,
Would set me in deep dells of Haemus cool,
And shield me with his boughs' o'ershadowing might!
Happy, who had the skill to understand
Nature's hid causes, and beneath his feet
All terrors cast, and death's relentless doom,
And the loud roar of greedy Acheron.
Blest too is he who knows the rural gods,
Georgics |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: to the wind among the trees. Sleep dwelt in the Toll House,
like a fixture: summer sleep, shallow, soft, and dreamless.
A cuckoo-clock, a great rarity in such a place, hooted at
intervals about the echoing house; and Mr. Jenning would open
his eyes for a moment in the bar, and turn the leaf of a
newspaper, and the resting school-ma'ams in the parlour would
be recalled to the consciousness of their inaction. Busy
Mrs. Corwin and her busy Chinaman might be heard indeed, in
the penetralia, pounding dough or rattling dishes; or perhaps
Rufe had called up some of the sleepers for a game of
croquet, and the hollow strokes of the mallet sounded far
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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 Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: people of thirty, healthy-minded, brimming with ambition, but
chained hand and foot to that one age and its limitations like so
many helpless galley-slaves! Think of the dull sameness of a
society made up of people all of one age and one set of looks,
habits, tastes and feelings. Think how superior to it earth would
be, with its variety of types and faces and ages, and the
enlivening attrition of the myriad interests that come into
pleasant collision in such a variegated society."
"Look here," says I, "do you know what you're doing?"
"Well, what am I doing?"
"You are making heaven pretty comfortable in one way, but you are
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