| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: We hear him and take him among us like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister mass, we ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, with word upon murmured word,
We flow, we descend, we turn. . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves on among us like light, like evening air . . .
Good night! good night! good night! we go our ways,
The rain runs over the pavement before our feet,
The cold rain falls, the rain sings.
We walk, we run, we ride. We turn our faces
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tales of the Klondyke by Jack London: had coated her face frostily, while his had massed his heavy
mustache till conversation was painful. By the greenish light of
the aurora borealis, the quicksilver showed itself frozen hard in
the bulb of the thermometer which hung outside the door. A
thousand dogs, in pitiful chorus, wailed their ancient wrongs and
claimed mercy from the unheeding stars. Not a breath of air was
moving. For them there was no shelter from the cold, no shrewd
crawling to leeward in snug nooks. The frost was everywhere, and
they lay in the open, ever and anon stretching their trail-
stiffened muscles and lifting the long wolf-howl.
They did not talk at first, the man and the woman. While the maid
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum: the Scoodlers were thin people sidewise and did not need much room.
So vast was the dome that there was a large space in the middle of the
cave, in front of all these houses, where the creatures might congregate
as in a great hall.
It made Dorothy shudder to see a huge iron kettle suspended by a stout
chain in the middle of the place, and underneath the kettle a great
heap of kindling wood and shavings, ready to light.
"What's that?" asked the shaggy man, drawing back as they approached
this place, so that they were forced to push him forward.
"The Soup Kettle!" yelled the Scoodlers, and then they shouted in the
next breath:
The Road to Oz |
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 Symposium by Plato: he not?
He must, replied Agathon.
Then, said Socrates, he desires that what he has at present may be
preserved to him in the future, which is equivalent to saying that he
desires something which is non-existent to him, and which as yet he has not
got:
Very true, he said.
Then he and every one who desires, desires that which he has not already,
and which is future and not present, and which he has not, and is not, and
of which he is in want;--these are the sort of things which love and desire
seek?
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