| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln: #STARTMARK#
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation: conceived in liberty, and
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war. . .testing whether
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated. . .
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place
for those who here gave their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate. . .we cannot consecrate. . .
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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 Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: strange Landfall, or taking with an untroubled mind the bearings
for his last Departure?
It is hard to say; for in that voyage from which no man returns
Landfall and Departure are instantaneous, merging together into one
moment of supreme and final attention. Certainly I do not remember
observing any sign of faltering in the set expression of his wasted
face, no hint of the nervous anxiety of a young commander about to
make land on an uncharted shore. He had had too much experience of
Departures and Landfalls! And had he not "served his time" in the
famous copper-ore trade out of the Bristol Channel, the work of the
staunchest ships afloat, and the school of staunch seamen?
The Mirror of the Sea |
