| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mayflower Compact: of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof do enact,
constitute, and frame, such just and equall Laws, Ordinances,
Acts, Constitutions, and Offices, from time to time,
as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the
Generall Good of the Colonie; unto which we promise
all due Submission and Obedience.
In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names
at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Raigne of our
Sovereigne Lord, King James of England, France, and Ireland,
the eighteenth, and of Scotland, the fiftie-fourth,
Anno. Domini, 1620.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: The beauties of man are frail, and the silver lies in the dust,
And the queen that we call to mind sleeps with the brave and the just;
Sleeps with the weary at length; but, honoured and ever fair,
Shines in the eye of the mind the crown of the silver hair.
Honolulu.
XXXIII - TO MY WIFE (A Fragment)
LONG must elapse ere you behold again
Green forest frame the entry of the lane -
The wild lane with the bramble and the brier,
The year-old cart-tracks perfect in the mire,
The wayside smoke, perchance, the dwarfish huts,
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Marriage Contract by Honore de Balzac: This indulgence seems to be an inheritance transmitted in the
female line. What man can blame it? Some copyist of the Civil
code, perhaps, who sees formulas only in the place of feelings.
As for your present position, the dissipation into which the life
of a fashionable woman cast you, and your own easy nature,
possibly your vanity, have opened the way for your wife and her
mother to get rid of you by this ruin so skilfully contrived. From
all of which you will conclude, my good friend, that the mission
you entrusted to me, and which I would all the more faithfully
fulfil because it amused me, is, necessarily, null and void. The
evil you wish me to prevent is accomplished,--"consummatum est."
|
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 Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland by Olive Schreiner: Halket's bent head might be seen as he paced to and fro.
"What's he doing out there in this blazing sun?"
"He's on guard," said the Colonial. "I thought you were here when it
happened. It's the best thing I ever saw or heard of in my whole life!"
He rolled half over on his side and laughed at the remembrance. "You see,
some of the men went down into the river, to look for fresh pools of water,
and they found a nigger, hidden away in a hole in the bank, not five
hundred yards from here! They found the bloody rascal by a little path he
tramped down to the water, trodden hard, just like a porcupine's walk.
They got him in the hole like an aardvark, with a bush over the mouth, so
you couldn't see it. He'd evidently been there a long time, the floor was
|
