| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: the scorching heat, and cloaking their shoulders from the biting
cold, for at the farther end of the room, where giant shadows
swayed and bowed and danced huge and black against the high
walls, the white frost glistened in the moonlight on the stone
pavements, and the breath went up like smoke.
In those days were no books to read, but at the best only rude
stories and jests, recited by some strolling mummer or minstrel
to the listening circle, gathered around the blaze and welcoming
the coarse, gross jests, and coarser, grosser songs with roars of
boisterous laughter.
Yet bleak and dreary as was the winter in those days, and cold
Men of Iron |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from King Lear by William Shakespeare: No, but not yet! May be he is not well.
Infirmity doth still neglect all office
Whereto our health is bound. We are not ourselves
When nature, being oppress'd, commands the mind
To suffer with the body. I'll forbear;
And am fallen out with my more headier will,
To take the indispos'd and sickly fit
For the sound man.- Death on my state! Wherefore
Should he sit here? This act persuades me
That this remotion of the Duke and her
Is practice only. Give me my servant forth.
King Lear |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Moby Dick by Herman Melville: did he finally strike, that few who by those rumors, at least, had
heard of the White Whale, few of those hunters were willing to
encounter the perils of his jaw.
But there were still other and more vital practical influences at
work. Not even at the present day has the original prestige of the
Sperm Whale, as fearfully distinguished from all other species of the
leviathan, died out of the minds of the whalemen as a body. There
are those this day among them, who, though intelligent and courageous
enough in offering battle to the Greenland or Right whale, would
perhaps--either from professional inexperience, or incompetency, or
timidity, decline a contest with the Sperm Whale; at any rate, there
Moby Dick |
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 Deserted Woman by Honore de Balzac: of sincerity in Gaston's voice, while he told of his youthful
troubles, began to understand all that grown children of five-and-
twenty suffer from diffidence, when hard work has kept them alike from
corrupting influences and intercourse with men and women of the world
whose sophistical reasoning and experience destroys the fair qualities
of youth. Here was the ideal of a woman's dreams, a man unspoiled as
yet by the egoism of family or success, or by that narrow selfishness
which blights the first impulses of honor, devotion, self-sacrifice,
and high demands of self; all the flowers so soon wither that enrich
at first the life of delicate but strong emotions, and keep alive the
loyalty of the heart.
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