| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Let what will be o'er me;
Give the face of earth around,
And the road before me.
Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I ask, the heaven above
And the road below me.
II - YOUTH AND LOVE - I
ONCE only by the garden gate
Our lips we joined and parted.
I must fulfil an empty fate
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from In Darkest England and The Way Out by General William Booth: the operations of our Brigade. But it will be found in practice that
there are no competing agencies. While the broken victuals of certain
large hotels are regularly collected, the things before enumerated,
and a number of others, are untouched because not sought after.
Of the immense extent to which Food is wasted few people have any
notion except those who have made actual experiments. Some years ago,
Lady Wolseley established a system of collection from house to house in
Mayfair, in order to secure materials for a charitable kitchen which,
in concert with Baroness Burdett-Coutts, she had started at
Westminster. The amount of the food which she gathered was enormous.
Sometimes legs of mutton from which only one or two slices had been cut
In Darkest England and The Way Out |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Louis Lambert by Honore de Balzac: flash. From this arose a standing feud between Lambert and his master,
resulting in a certain amount of "strap." Thus did he first discover
the power of his eye.
The hapless poet, so full of nerves, as sensitive as a woman, under
the sway of chronic melancholy, and as sick with genius as a girl with
love that she pines for, knowing nothing of it;--this boy, at once so
powerful and so weak, transplanted by "Corinne" from the country he
loved, to be squeezed in the mould of a collegiate routine to which
every spirit and every body must yield, whatever their range or
temperament, accepting its rule and its uniform as gold is crushed
into round coin under the press; Louis Lambert suffered in every spot
Louis Lambert |
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 Vailima Prayers & Sabbath Morn by Robert Louis Stevenson: deserts, but our desires; on the pit and the miry clay, the
blackness of despair, the horror of misconduct, from which our feet
have been plucked out. For our sins forgiven or prevented, for our
shame unpublished, we bless and thank Thee, O God. Help us yet
again and ever. So order events, so strengthen our frailty, as
that day by day we shall come before Thee with this song of
gratitude, and in the end we be dismissed with honour. In their
weakness and their fear, the vessels of thy handiwork so pray to
Thee, so praise Thee. Amen.
SUNDAY
WE beseech Thee, Lord, to behold us with favour, folk of many
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