| 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: X. LETTER
From time to time, lifting his eyes, he sees
The soft blue starlight through the one small window,
The moon above black trees, and clouds, and Venus,--
And turns to write . . . The clock, behind ticks softly.
It is so long, indeed, since I have written,--
Two years, almost, your last is turning yellow,--
That these first words I write seem cold and strange.
Are you the man I knew, or have you altered?
Altered, of course--just as I too have altered--
And whether towards each other, or more apart,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Augsburg Confession by Philip Melanchthon: anxiety to enumerate all sins, for it is impossible to recount
all sins, as the Psalm testifies, 19,13: Who can understand
his errors? Also Jeremiah, 17 9: The heart is deceitful; who
can know it; But if no sins were forgiven, except those that
are recounted, consciences could never find peace; for very
many sins they neither see nor can remember. The ancient
writers also testify that an enumeration is not necessary. For
in the Decrees, Chrysostom is quoted, who says thus: I say not
to you that you should disclose yourself in public, nor that
you accuse yourself before others, but I would have you obey
the prophet who says: "Disclose thy self before God."
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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 Pericles by William Shakespeare: Sit down: thou art no flatterer:
I thank thee for it; and heaven forbid
That kings should let their ears hear their faults hid!
Fit counsellor and servant for a prince,
Who by thy wisdom makest a prince thy servant,
What wouldst thou have me do?
HELICANUS.
To bear with patience
Such griefs as you yourself do lay upon yourself.
PERICLES.
Thou speak'st like a physician, Helicanus,
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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 Silverado Squatters by Robert Louis Stevenson: between the ordinary face of night and the splendour that
shone upon us in that drive. Two in our waggon knew night as
she shines upon the tropics, but even that bore no
comparison. The nameless colour of the sky, the hues of the
star-fire, and the incredible projection of the stars
themselves, starting from their orbits, so that the eye
seemed to distinguish their positions in the hollow of space
- these were things that we had never seen before and shall
never see again.
Meanwhile, in this altered night, we proceeded on our way
among the scents and silence of the forest, reached the top
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