| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: The wet new wind of May,
And a tune blew up from the curb
Where the street-pianos play.
My room was white with the sun
And Love cried out in me,
"I am strong, I will break your heart
Unless you set me free."
A CRY
OH, there are eyes that he can see,
And hands to make his hands rejoice,
But to my lover I must be
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: admitted that the men of Athens, her sons, have reliance on themselves
rather than on foreigners to fight her battles. And further, supposing
we offered our resident aliens a share in various other honourable
duties, including the cavalry service,[8] I shall be surprised if we
do not increase the goodwill of the aliens themselves, whilst at the
same time we add distinctly to the strength and grandeur of our city.
[1] Lit. "metics" or "metoecs."
[2] {misthos}, e.g. of the assembly, the senate, and the dicasts.
[3] The {metoikion}. See Plat. "Laws," 850 B; according to Isaeus, ap.
Harpocr. s.v., it was 12 drachmae per annum for a male and 6
drachmae for a female.
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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 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe: reason to be wary and backward, by how much the hazard of
being betrayed is the greater; and would the ladies consider
this, and act the wary part, they would discover every cheat
that offered; for, in short, the lives of very few men nowadays
will bear a character; and if the ladies do but make a little
inquiry, they will soon be able to distinguish the men and
deliver themselves. As for women that do not think they own
safety worth their though, that, impatient of their perfect state,
resolve, as they call it, to take the first good Christian that
comes, that run into matrimony as a horse rushes into the battle,
I can say nothing to them but this, that they are a sort of ladies
Moll Flanders |
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 Illustrious Gaudissart by Honore de Balzac: him with unanswerable arguments, and, so to speak, sharpened the file
of the tongue which was about to operate upon the life of France.
The puppet amply rewarded the pains bestowed upon him. The heads of
the company boasted of the illustrious Gaudissart, showed him such
attention and proclaimed the great talents of this perambulating
prospectus so loudly in the sphere of exalted banking and commercial
diplomacy, that the financial managers of two newspapers (celebrated
at that time but since defunct) were seized with the idea of employing
him to get subscribers. The proprietors of the "Globe," an organ of
Saint-Simonism, and the "Movement," a republican journal, each invited
the illustrious Gaudissart to a conference, and proposed to give him
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