| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis: CHAPTER IX
We was jogging along one afternoon not fur
from a good-sized town at the top of Ohio,
right on the lake, when we run acrost
some remainders of a busted circus riding in a stake
and chain wagon. They was two fellers--both
jugglers, acrobats, and tumblers--and a balloon.
The circus had busted without paying them nothing
but promises fur months and months, and they had
took the team and wagon and balloon by attach-
ment, they said. They was carting her from the
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: One false step, and our enemies would be upon us. Surely, comrades, you do
not want Jones back?"
Once again this argument was unanswerable. Certainly the animals did not
want Jones back; if the holding of debates on Sunday mornings was liable
to bring him back, then the debates must stop. Boxer, who had now had time
to think things over, voiced the general feeling by saying: "If Comrade
Napoleon says it, it must be right." And from then on he adopted the
maxim, "Napoleon is always right," in addition to his private motto of "I
will work harder."
By this time the weather had broken and the spring ploughing had begun.
The shed where Snowball had drawn his plans of the windmill had been shut
Animal Farm |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: of Assisi, the art of Giotto, and Dante's DIVINE COMEDY, was not
allowed to develop on its own lines, but was interrupted and
spoiled by the dreary classical Renaissance that gave us Petrarch,
and Raphael's frescoes, and Palladian architecture, and formal
French tragedy, and St. Paul's Cathedral, and Pope's poetry, and
everything that is made from without and by dead rules, and does
not spring from within through some spirit informing it. But
wherever there is a romantic movement in art there somehow, and
under some form, is Christ, or the soul of Christ. He is in ROMEO
AND JULIET, in the WINTER'S TALE, in Provencal poetry, in the
ANCIENT MARINER, in LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI, and in Chatterton's
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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 Intentions by Oscar Wilde: language into ignoble clay, he made from it men and women that
live. He is the most Shakespearian creature since Shakespeare. If
Shakespeare could sing with myriad lips, Browning could stammer
through a thousand mouths. Even now, as I am speaking, and
speaking not against him but for him, there glides through the room
the pageant of his persons. There, creeps Fra Lippo Lippi with his
cheeks still burning from some girl's hot kiss. There, stands
dread Saul with the lordly male-sapphires gleaming in his turban.
Mildred Tresham is there, and the Spanish monk, yellow with hatred,
and Blougram, and Ben Ezra, and the Bishop of St. Praxed's. The
spawn of Setebos gibbers in the corner, and Sebald, hearing Pippa
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