| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Garden Party by Katherine Mansfield: stone on the bottom moved, rocked, and there was a glimpse of a black
feeler; now a thread-like creature wavered by and was lost. Something was
happening to the pink, waving trees; they were changing to a cold moonlight
blue. And now there sounded the faintest "plop." Who made that sound?
What was going on down there? And how strong, how damp the seaweed smelt
in the hot sun...
The green blinds were drawn in the bungalows of the summer colony. Over
the verandas, prone on the paddock, flung over the fences, there were
exhausted-looking bathing-dresses and rough striped towels. Each back
window seemed to have a pair of sand-shoes on the sill and some lumps of
rock or a bucket or a collection of pawa shells. The bush quivered in a
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: A flame half ready to fly out sometimes
At some annoyance may be fanned up in him,
But soon it falls, and when it falls goes out;
He knows how little room there is in there
For crude and futile animosities,
And how much for the joy of being whole,
And how much for long sorrow and old pain.
On our side there are some who may be given
To grow old wondering what he thinks of us
And some above us, who are, in his eyes,
Above himself, -- and that's quite right and English.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from First Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln: endure forever--it being impossible to destroy it except by some action
not provided for in the instrument itself.
Again, if the United States be not a government proper, but an association
of States in the nature of contract merely, can it, as a contract,
be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it?
One party to a contract may violate it--break it, so to speak;
but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?
Descending from these general principles, we find the proposition
that in legal contemplation the Union is perpetual confirmed by
the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than
the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of
|
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 Travels with a Donkey in the Cevenne by Robert Louis Stevenson: the plough and proceed to reascend the field. From all these
furrowing ploughshares, from the feet of oxen, from a labourer here
and there who was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, the wind
carried away a thin dust like so much smoke. It was a fine, busy,
breathing, rustic landscape; and as I continued to descend, the
highlands of Gevaudan kept mounting in front of me against the sky.
I had crossed the Loire the day before; now I was to cross the
Allier; so near are these two confluents in their youth. Just at
the bridge of Langogne, as the long-promised rain was beginning to
fall, a lassie of some seven or eight addressed me in the
sacramental phrase, 'D'OU'ST-CE-QUE VOUS VENEZ?' She did it with
|
