| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: When now the sprightly trumpet, from afar,
Had giv'n the signal of approaching war,
Had rous'd the neighing steeds to scour the fields,
While the fierce riders clatter'd on their shields;
Trembling with rage, the Latian youth prepare
To join th' allies, and headlong rush to war.
Fierce Ufens, and Messapus, led the crowd,
With bold Mezentius, who blasphem'd aloud.
These thro' the country took their wasteful course,
The fields to forage, and to gather force.
Then Venulus to Diomede they send,
Aeneid |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from St. Ives by Robert Louis Stevenson: both looking for him! So far, we had pursued our way unmolested,
although raising a clamour fit to wake the dead; but at last, in
Abercromby Place, I believe - at least it was a crescent of highly
respectable houses fronting on a garden - Byfield and I, having
fallen somewhat in the rear with Rowley, came to a simultaneous
halt. Our ruffians were beginning to wrench off bells and door-
plates!
'Oh, I say!' says Byfield, 'this is too much of a good thing!
Confound it, I'm a respectable man - a public character, by George!
I can't afford to get taken up by the police.'
'My own case exactly,' said I.
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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 Market-Place by Harold Frederic: described a somersault, and fell like a plummet.
He stirred not a step, but reloaded the barrel with a hand
shaking for joy. From where he stood he could see the
dead bird; there could never have been a cleaner "kill."
In the warming glow of his satisfaction in himself,
there kindled a new liking of a different sort for Plowden
and Balder. He owed to them, at this belated hour
of his life, a novel delight of indescribable charm.
There came to him, from the woods, the shrill bucolic
voice of the keeper, admonishing a wayward dog. He was
conscious of even a certain tenderness for this keeper--and
The Market-Place |
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 Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain: boom of the tolling bells.
At last I ventured a story myself; and vast was the
success of it. Not right off, of course, for the native
of those islands does not, as a rule, dissolve upon the
early applications of a humorous thing; but the fifth
time I told it, they began to crack in places; the eight
time I told it, they began to crumble; at the twelfth
repetition they fell apart in chunks; and at the fifteenth
they disintegrated, and I got a broom and swept them
up. This language is figurative. Those islanders --
well, they are slow pay at first, in the matter of return
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court |
