| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moran of the Lady Letty by Frank Norris: Chinamen were asleep or smoking opium. It was Charlie's watch.
Kitchell dozed in his hammock in the shadow of the mainsheet.
Wilbur was below tinkering with his paint-pot about the cabin.
The stillness was profound. It was the stillness of the summer
sea at high noon.
The lookout in the crow's nest broke the quiet.
"Hy-yah, hy-yah!" he cried, leaning from the barrel and calling
through an arched palm. "Hy-yah, one two, plenty, many tortle,
topside, wattah; hy-yah, all-same tortle."
"Hello, hello!" cried the Captain, rolling from his hammock.
"Turtle? Where-away?"
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: `To-day we had prayers on deck as usual when at sea. I
read the 14th chapter, I think, of Job. Captain Wemyss has
been in the habit of doing this on board his own ship,
agreeably to the Articles of War. Our passage round the Cape
[Cape Wrath] was rather a cross one, and as the wind was
northerly, we had a pretty heavy sea, but upon the whole have
made a good passage, leaving many vessels behind us in Orkney.
I am quite well, my dear; and Captain Wemyss, who has much
spirit, and who is much given to observation, and a perfect
enthusiast in his profession, enlivens the voyage greatly.
Let me entreat you to move about much, and take a walk with
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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 Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri: of the Liber Sententiarum, where Peter says: "Cupiens aliquid de
penuria ac tenuitate nostra cum paupercula in gazophylacium
domini mittere,"
v. 105. The fifth light.] Solomon.
v. 112. That taper's radiance.] St. Dionysius the Areopagite.
"The famous Grecian fanatic, who gave himself out for Dionysius
the Areopagite, disciple of St. Paul, and who, under the
protection of this venerable name, gave laws and instructions to
those that were desirous of raising their souls above all human
things in order to unite them to their great source by sublime
contemplation, lived most probably in this century (the fourth),
The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) |
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 Shadow out of Time by H. P. Lovecraft: welled up from unguarded depths. I thought of that which the Great
Race had feared, and of what might still be lurking - be it ever
so weak and dying - down there. I thought of those five-circle
prints and of what my dreams had told me of such prints - and
of strange winds and whistling noises associated with them. And
I thought of the tales of the modern blackfellows, wherein the
horror of great winds and nameless subterrene ruins was dwelt
upon.
I knew from a carven wall symbol the right floor to enter,
and came at last after passing that other book I had examined
- to the great circular space with the branching archways. On
Shadow out of Time |
