| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: And binding with briars my joys and desires.
THE LITTLE VAGABOND
Dear mother, dear mother, the Church is cold;
But the Alehouse is healthy, and pleasant, and warm.
Besides, I can tell where I am used well;
Such usage in heaven will never do well.
But, if at the Church they would give us some ale,
And a pleasant fire our souls to regale,
We'd sing and we'd pray all the livelong day,
Nor ever once wish from the Church to stray.
Then the Parson might preach, and drink, and sing,
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fisherman's Luck by Henry van Dyke: not need to keep to the path, for there is none. You may make your
own trail, whithersoever fancy leads you; and at night you may pitch
your tent under any tree that looks friendly and firm.
Here, if anywhere, you shall find Dryads, and Naiads, and Oreads.
And if you chance to see one, by moonlight, combing her long hair
beside the glimmering waterfall, or slipping silently, with gleaming
shoulders, through the grove of silver birches, you may call her by
the name that pleases you best. She is all your own discovery.
There is no social directory in the wilderness.
One side of our nature, no doubt, finds its satisfaction in the
regular, the proper, the conventional. But there is another side of
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Z. Marcas by Honore de Balzac: Marceau who raised the Parisian to the level of the natural savage--a
republican, a conspirator, a Frenchman, an old man, who outdid all we
have heard of Negro determination, and all that Cooper tells us of the
tenacity and coolness of the Redskins under defeat. Morey, the
Guatimozin of the "Mountain," preserved an attitude unparalleled in
the annals of European justice.
This is what Marcas told us during the small hours, sandwiching his
discourse with slices of bread spread with cheese and washed down with
wine. All the tobacco was burned out. Now and then the hackney coaches
clattering across the Place de l'Odeon, or the omnibuses toiling past,
sent up their dull rumbling, as if to remind us that Paris was still
|
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 Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: These first pages told of pleasure trips, of visits from and to good
friends, of many little events of every-day life. Then came some
accounts, written in pencil, of shopping expeditions to the city.
Costly laces and jewels had been bought, and linen garments for
children by the dozen. "She is rich, generous, and charitable,"
thought the detective, for the book showed that the considerable
sums which had been spent here had not been for the writer herself.
The laces bore the mark, "For our church"; behind the account for
the linen stood the words, "For the charity school."
Muller began to feel a strong sympathy for the writer of these
notices. She showed an orderly, almost pedantic, character,
|
