| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: messenger, and the king suspect that some particulars have been purposely
withheld. I can see no means, severe or mild, by which to stem the evil.
Oh, what are we great ones on the waves of humanity? We think to control
them, and are ourselves driven to and fro, hither and thither.
[Enter Machiavel.
Regent. Are the despatches to the king prepared?
Machiavel. In an hour they will be ready for your signature.
Regent. Have you made the report sufficiently circumstantial?
Machiavel. Full and circumstantial, as the king loves to have it. I relate
how the rage of the iconoclasts first broke out at St. Omer. How a furious
multitude, with staves, hatchets, hammers, ladders, and cords,
Egmont |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: him some cake and placed him in the sun on a bundle of hay; and the
poor old creature, trembling and drooling, would thank her in his
broken voice, and put out his hands whenever she left him. Finally he
died; and she had a mass said for the repose of his soul.
That day a great joy came to her: at dinner-time, Madame de
Larsonniere's servant called with the parrot, the cage, and the perch
and chain and lock. A note from the baroness told Madame Aubain that
as her husband had been promoted to a prefecture, they were leaving
that night, and she begged her to accept the bird as a remembrance and
a token of her esteem.
Since a long time the parrot had been on Felicite's mind, because he
A Simple Soul |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Their baleful zeal had come about,
King Cole met many a wrathful eye
So kindly that its wrath went out --
Or partly out. Say what they would,
He seemed the more to court their candor;
But never told what kind of good
Was in Alexis and Evander.
And Old King Cole, with many a puff
That haloed his urbanity,
Would smoke till he had smoked enough,
And listen most attentively.
|
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 The Time Machine by H. G. Wells: halted motionless upon the horizon, a vast dome glowing with a
dull heat, and now and then suffering a momentary extinction. At
one time it had for a little while glowed more brilliantly again,
but it speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived by
this slowing down of its rising and setting that the work of the
tidal drag was done. The earth had come to rest with one face to
the sun, even as in our own time the moon faces the earth. Very
cautiously, for I remembered my former headlong fall, I began to
reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the circling hands
until the thousands one seemed motionless and the daily one was
no longer a mere mist upon its scale. Still slower, until the
The Time Machine |
