| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: there could have been so much valour under a grey frock.
And so you wounded the knight in the arm. You are a
wild girl, Mawd,--a chip of the old block, Mawd. A wild girl,
and a wild friar, and three or four foresters, wild lads all,
to keep a bridge against a tame knight, and a tame sheriff,
and fifty tame varlets; by this light, the like was never heard!
But do you know, Mawd, you must not go about so any more,
sweet Mawd: you must stay at home, you must ensconce;
for there is your tame sheriff on the one hand, that will take
you perforce; and there is your wild forester on the other hand,
that will take you without any force at all, Mawd: your wild
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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 The Unseen World and Other Essays by John Fiske: elements entering into ancient life were so few relatively, that
there must have been far more than there is now of that intense
realization of life which we can observe in children and remember
of our own childhood. Space permitting, it would be easy to show
from Greek literature how intense was this realization of life.
But my point will already have been sufficiently apprehended.
Already we cannot fail to see how difficult it is to get more
than a minimum of conscious fruition out of a too complex and
rapid activity.
One other point is worth noticing before we close. How is this
turmoil of modern existence impressing itself upon the physical
The Unseen World and Other Essays |
