| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: from which men suppose themselves to learn opinions; in which young
gentlemen from the universities are encouraged, at so much a line,
to garble facts, insult foreign nations and calumniate private
individuals; and which are now the source of glory, so that if a
man's name be often enough printed there, he becomes a kind of
demigod; and people will pardon him when he talks back and forth,
as they do for Mr. Gladstone; and crowd him to suffocation on
railway platforms, as they did the other day to General Boulanger;
and buy his literary works, as I hope you have just done for me.
Our fathers, when they were upon some great enterprise, would
sacrifice a life; building, it may be, a favourite slave into 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 Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: " - On high with the haka-ikis my father sits in state,
Ten times fifty kinsmen salute him in the gate;
Round all his martial body, and in bands across his face,
The marks of the tattooer proclaim his lofty place.
I too, in the hands of the cunning, in the sacred cabin of palm, (5)
Have shrunk like the mimosa, and bleated like the lamb;
Round half my tender body, that none shall clasp but you,
For a crest and a fair adornment go dainty lines of blue.
Love, love, beloved Rua, love levels all degrees,
And the well-tattooed Taheia clings panting to your knees."
" - Taheia, song of the morning, how long is the longest love?
Ballads |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: As he traveled he hunted as he had hunted with his ape
people in the past, as Kala had taught him to hunt, turning
over rotted logs to find some toothsome vermin, running high
into the trees to rob a bird's nest, or pouncing upon a tiny
rodent with the quickness of a cat. There were other things
that he ate, too, but the less detailed the account of an ape's
diet, the better--and Tarzan was again an ape, the same fierce,
brutal anthropoid that Kala had taught him to be, and that
he had been for the first twenty years of his life.
Occasionally he smiled as he recalled some friend who
might even at the moment be sitting placid and immaculate
The Return of Tarzan |
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 Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: knave?
FIRST CITIZEN
Here be one of the household coming. Well, Dame Lucy, thou art of
the Court, how does thy poor mistress the Duchess, with her sweet
face?
MISTRESS LUCY
O well-a-day! O miserable day! O day! O misery! Why it is just
nineteen years last June, at Michaelmas, since I was married to my
husband, and it is August now, and here is the Duke murdered; there
is a coincidence for you!
SECOND CITIZEN
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