| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Master of the World by Jules Verne: Evidently they planned to take aboard the last of their wood. Then
they would withdraw within their machine, and go to sleep. Would not
that be the time to surprise them, before they could defend
themselves?
Rather than to attempt to reach and capture the ship in face of this
resolute Captain who was guarding it, Wells and I agreed that it was
better to let his men return unassailed, and wait till they were all
asleep.
It was now half an hour after ten. Steps were once more heard upon
the shore. The man with a lantern and his companion, again remounted
the ravine toward the woods. When they were safely beyond hearing,
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Princess by Alfred Tennyson: The splendour falls on castle walls
And snowy summits old in story:
The long light shakes across the lakes,
And the wild cataract leaps in glory.
Blow, bugle, blow, set the wild echoes flying,
Blow, bugle; answer, echoes, dying, dying, dying.
O hark, O hear! how thin and clear,
And thinner, clearer, farther going!
O sweet and far from cliff and scar
The horns of Elfland faintly blowing!
Blow, let us hear the purple glens replying:
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: and the spears were few and far between, but so persistent
and inevitable that the slow-moving column of heavy-laden
raiders was in a constant state of panic--panic at
the uncertainty of who the next would be to fall, and when.
It was with the greatest difficulty that the Arabs prevented
their men a dozen times from throwing away their burdens and
fleeing like frightened rabbits up the trail toward the north.
And so the day wore on--a frightful nightmare of a day for the
raiders--a day of weary but well-repaid work for the Waziri.
At night the Arabs constructed a rude BOMA in a little
clearing by a river, and went into camp.
The Return of Tarzan |
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 Father Damien by Robert Louis Stevenson: then surrounds us in the horror of a nightmare - what a haggard eye
you would have rolled over your reluctant shoulder towards the
house on Beretania Street! Had you gone on; had you found every
fourth face a blot upon the landscape; had you visited the hospital
and seen the butt-ends of human beings lying there almost
unrecognisable, but still breathing, still thinking, still
remembering; you would have understood that life in the lazaretto
is an ordeal from which the nerves of a man's spirit shrink, even
as his eye quails under the brightness of the sun; you would have
felt it was (even today) a pitiful place to visit and a hell to
dwell in. It is not the fear of possible infection. That seems a
|
