| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Wait for the light and music of those suns which never rise.
The quenched-out torch, the lonely cypress-gloom,
The little dust stored in the narrow urn,
The gentle XAIPE of the Attic tomb, -
Were not these better far than to return
To my old fitful restless malady,
Or spend my days within the voiceless cave of misery?
Nay! for perchance that poppy-crowned god
Is like the watcher by a sick man's bed
Who talks of sleep but gives it not; his rod
Hath lost its virtue, and, when all is said,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: In the lighted house of her father, why should Taheia start?
Taheia heavy of hair, Taheia tender of heart,
Taheia the well-descended, a bountiful dealer in love,
Nimble of foot like the deer, and kind of eye like the dove?
Sly and shy as a cat, with never a change of face,
Taheia slips to the door, like one that would breathe a space;
Saunters and pauses, and looks at the stars, and lists to the seas;
Then sudden and swift as a cat, she plunges under the trees.
Swift as a cat she runs, with her garment gathered high,
Leaping, nimble of foot, running, certain of eye;
And ever to guide her way over the smooth and the sharp,
Ballads |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: just as well as a highly organized heaven.
Then I went about the streets and peeped into people's front
windows, and the decorations upon the tables were after the
manner of the year 1850. Main Street was full of country folk
from the desert, come in to trade with the Zion Mercantile
Co-operative Institute. The Church, I fancy, looks after the
finances of this thing, and it consequently pays good dividends.
The faces of the women were not lovely. In-deed, but for the
certainty that ugly persons are just as irrational in the matter
of undivided love as the beautiful, it seems that polygamy was a
blessed institution for the women, and that only the dread
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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 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: extenuated their faults as much as I durst before so strict an
examiner; and upon every article gave as favourable a turn as the
matter would bear. For, indeed, who is there alive that will not
be swayed by his bias and partiality to the place of his birth?
I have related the substance of several conversations I had with
my master during the greatest part of the time I had the honour
to be in his service; but have, indeed, for brevity sake, omitted
much more than is here set down.
When I had answered all his questions, and his curiosity seemed
to be fully satisfied, he sent for me one morning early, and
commanded me to sit down at some distance (an honour which he had
Gulliver's Travels |
