| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: towards him I went, taking no heed of the others, of whom there may have
been six or seven. Soon I was sure, and advancing with outstretched
hand, said:
"Good-day, Mynheer Piet Retief. Who would have thought that we who
parted so far away and so long ago would live to meet among the Zulus?"
He stared at me.
"Who is it? Who is it? Allemachte! I know now. The little Englishman,
Allan Quatermain, who shot the geese down in the Old Colony. Well, I
should not be surprised, for the man you beat in that match told me that
you were travelling in these parts. Only I understood him to say that
the Zulus had killed you."
Marie |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy: could be heard nowhere else. Gusts in innumerable series
followed each other from the northwest, and when each one
of them raced past the sound of its progress resolved
into three. Treble, tenor, and bass notes were to be
found therein. The general ricochet of the whole over
pits and prominences had the gravest pitch of the chime.
Next there could be heard the baritone buzz of a holly tree.
Below these in force, above them in pitch, a dwindled voice
strove hard at a husky tune, which was the peculiar local
sound alluded to. Thinner and less immediately traceable
than the other two, it was far more impressive than either.
Return of the Native |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: To house and garden, field and lawn,
The meadow-gates we swang upon,
To pump and stable, tree and swing,
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
And fare you well for evermore,
O ladder at the hayloft door,
O hayloft where the cobwebs cling,
Good-bye, good-bye, to everything!
Crack goes the whip, and off we go;
The trees and houses smaller grow;
Last, round the woody turn we sing:
A Child's Garden of Verses |
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 Ancient Regime by Charles Kingsley: their society on these grounds, and fenced it with quaint
ceremonies, old or new, conceive the importance of their own act;
we, looking at it from a distance, may see all that such a society
involved, which was quite new to the world just then; and see, that
it was the very child of the Ancien Regime--of a time when men were
growing weary of the violent factions, political and spiritual,
which had torn Europe in pieces for more than a century, and longed
to say: "After all, we are all alike in one thing--for we are at
least men."
Its spread through England and Scotland, and the seceding bodies
which arose from it, as well as the supposed Jacobite tendency of
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