| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Poems of Goethe, Bowring, Tr. by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: CHORUS.
THE festal day hail ye
With garlands of pleasure,
And dances' soft measure,
With rapture commingled
And sweet choral song.
DAMON.
Oh, how I yearn from out the crowd to flee!
What joy a secret glade would give to me!
Amid the throng, the turmoil here,
Confined the plain, the breezes e'en appear.
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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 Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers by Jonathan Swift: to find my gentleman mounted on a table with a two-foot rule in
his hand, measuring my walls, and taking the dimensions of the
room. Pray sir, says I, not to interrupt you, have you any
business with me? Only, sir, replies he, order the girl to bring
me a better light, for this is but a very dim one. Sir, says I,
my name is Partridge: Oh! the Doctor's brother, belike, cries he;
the stair-case, I believe, and these two apartments hung in close
mourning, will be sufficient, and only a strip of bays round the
other rooms. The Doctor must needs die rich, he had great
dealings in his way for many years; if he had no family coat, you
had as good use the escutcheons of the company, they are as
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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 Essays of Francis Bacon by Francis Bacon: depriveth a man of one of the most principal in-
struments for action; which is trust and belief.
The best composition and temperature, is to have
openness in fame and opinion; secrecy in habit;
dissimulation in seasonable use; and a power to
feign, if there be no remedy.
Of Parents
AND CHILDREN
THE joys of parents are secret; and so are their
griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one;
nor they will not utter the other. Children sweeten
Essays of Francis Bacon |
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 Night and Day by Virginia Woolf: back to her old view of him and could, with an effort, recall the haze
which surrounded his figure, and the sense of confused, heightened
exhilaration which lay all about his neighborhood, so that for months
at a time she had never exactly heard his voice or seen his face--or
so it now seemed to her. The pain of her loss shot through her.
Nothing would ever make up--not success, or happiness, or oblivion.
But this pang was immediately followed by the assurance that now, at
any rate, she knew the truth; and Katharine, she thought, stealing a
look at her, did not know the truth; yes, Katharine was immensely to
be pitied.
The cab, which had been caught in the traffic, was now liberated and
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