| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Dreams & Dust by Don Marquis: To irrevocable, swift acts?
Now who has known, who understood,
Wherefore some idle thing
May stab with deadlier sting
Than well-considered insult could?--
May spur the languor of a mood
And rouse a tiger in the blood?--
Ah, Christ!--had she not laughed just when
That fancy came! . . . for then . . . and then . . .
A sudden mist dropped from the sky,
A mist swept in across the sea . . .
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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 Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: correspondents, the question put appearing at first so
innocent, truly cutting so deep. It is not, indeed, until
after some reconnaissance and review that the writer awakes
to find himself engaged upon something in the nature of
autobiography, or, perhaps worse, upon a chapter in the life
of that little, beautiful brother whom we once all had, and
whom we have all lost and mourned, the man we ought to have
been, the man we hoped to be. But when word has been passed
(even to an editor), it should, if possible, be kept; and if
sometimes I am wise and say too little, and sometimes weak
and say too much, the blame must lie at the door of the
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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 Scenes from a Courtesan's Life by Honore de Balzac: man's mind; but the boldest would have found more to quail at than to
hope for in the expression of his eyes, once bright and yellow like
those of a tiger, but now shrouded, from austerities and privations,
with a haze like that which overhangs the horizon in the dog-days,
when, though the earth is hot and luminous, the mist makes it
indistinct and dim--almost invisible.
The gravity of a Spaniard, the deep furrows which the myriad scars of
virulent smallpox made hideously like broken ruts, were ploughed into
his face, which was sallow and tanned by the sun. The hardness of this
countenance was all the more conspicuous, being framed in the meagre
dry wig of a priest who takes no care of his person, a black wig
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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 Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum: "No, indeed!" cried Dorothy.
"Then lock her up," said Langwidere to her soldiers, and they led
Dorothy to a high tower at the north of the palace and locked her
securely within.
The soldiers afterward tried to lift Tiktok, but they found the
machine so solid and heavy that they could not stir it. So they left
him standing in the center of the drawing-room.
"People will think I have a new statue," said Langwidere, "so it won't
matter in the least, and Nanda can keep him well polished."
"What shall we do with the hen?" asked the colonel, who had just
discovered Billina in the work-basket.
Ozma of Oz |
