| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Cousin Betty by Honore de Balzac: of all their works; and then, let any lover of art go to Florence and
see Michael Angelo's /Penseroso/, or to the Cathedral of Mainz, and
behold the /Virgin/ by Albert Durer, who has created a living woman
out of ebony, under her threefold drapery, with the most flowing, the
softest hair that ever a waiting-maid combed through; let all the
ignorant flock thither, and they will acknowledge that genius can give
mind to drapery, to armor, to a robe, and fill it with a body, just as
a man leaves the stamp of his individuality and habits of life on the
clothes he wears.
Sculpture is the perpetual realization of the fact which once, and
never again, was, in painting called Raphael!
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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 A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: Could still go round and boast he had
With queries floored me daily.
He'll stick, I'll bet, in less than five
Brief minutes any man alive.
ETERNAL FRIENDSHIP
Who once has had a friend has found
The link 'twixt mortal and divine;
Though now he sleeps in hallowed ground,
He lives in memory's sacret shrine;
And there he freely moves about,
A spirit that has quit the clay,
 A Heap O' Livin' |