| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Damnation of Theron Ware by Harold Frederic: with the splendor of such dignified pomp of harmony and
such suggestions of measureless choral power and authority
that Theron sat abruptly up, then was drawn resistlessly
to his feet. He stood motionless in the strange room,
feeling most of all that one should kneel to hear such music.
"This you'll know too--the funeral march from the Second
Sonata," she was saying, before he realized that the end
of the other had come. He sank upon the divan again,
bending forward and clasping his hands tight around his knees.
His heart beat furiously as he listened to the weird,
mediaeval processional, with its wild, clashing chords
The Damnation of Theron Ware |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Lover's Complaint by William Shakespeare: Tearing of papers, breaking rings a-twain,
Storming her world with sorrow's wind and rain.
Upon her head a platted hive of straw,
Which fortified her visage from the sun,
Whereon the thought might think sometime it saw
The carcase of a beauty spent and done.
Time had not scythed all that youth begun,
Nor youth all quit; but, spite of Heaven's fell rage
Some beauty peeped through lattice of sear'd age.
Oft did she heave her napkin to her eyne,
Which on it had conceited characters,
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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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: Far have you come, my lady, from the town.
NOUS N'IRONS PLUS AU BOIS.
We'll walk the woods no more,
But stay beside the fire,
To weep for old desire
And things that are no more.
The woods are spoiled and hoar,
The ways are full of mire;
We'll walk the woods no more,
But stay beside the fire.
We loved, in days of yore,
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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 A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: chimerical. Coral is not to be found in all parts of this gulf, and
red coral in very few. Nor does this water in fact differ from that
of other seas. The patriarch and I have frequently amused ourselves
with making observations, and could never discover any redness, but
in the shallows, where a kind of weed grew which they call gouesmon,
which redness disappeared as soon as we plucked up the plant. It is
observable that St. Jerome, confining himself to the Hebrew, calls
this sea Jamsuf. Jam in that language signifies sea, and suf is the
name of a plant in Aethiopia, from which the Abyssins extract a
beautiful crimson; whether this be the same with the gouesmon, I
know not, but am of opinion that the herb gives to this sea both the
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