| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: A shaft of language that has flown sometimes
A little higher than the hearts and heads
Of nature's minions, it will yet be heard,
Like a new song that waits for distant ears.
I cannot be the man that I am not;
And while I own that earth is my affliction,
I am a man of earth, who says not all
To all alike. That were impossible,
Even as it were so that He should plant
A larger garden first. But you today
Are for the larger sowing; and your seed,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: That we cannot bestow but by their death.
KING EDWARD.
Thy opposition is beyond our Law.
COUNTESS.
So is your desire: if the law
Can hinder you to execute the one,
Let it forbid you to attempt the other.
I cannot think you love me as you say,
Unless you do make good what you have sworn.
KING EDWARD.
No more; thy husband and the Queen shall die.
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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 Macbeth by William Shakespeare: And I will put that Businesse in your Bosomes,
Whose execution takes your Enemie off,
Grapples you to the heart; and loue of vs,
Who weare our Health but sickly in his Life,
Which in his Death were perfect
2.Murth. I am one, my Liege,
Whom the vile Blowes and Buffets of the World
Hath so incens'd, that I am recklesse what I doe,
To spight the World
1.Murth. And I another,
So wearie with Disasters, tugg'd with Fortune,
Macbeth |
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 Iliad by Homer: and fight their hardest, and at the going down of the sun the
line of beacon-fires blazes forth, flaring high for those that
dwell near them to behold, if so be that they may come with their
ships and succour them--even so did the light flare from the head
of Achilles, as he stood by the trench, going beyond the wall--
but he aid not join the Achaeans for he heeded the charge which
his mother laid upon him.
There did he stand and shout aloud. Minerva also raised her voice
from afar, and spread terror unspeakable among the Trojans.
Ringing as the note of a trumpet that sounds alarm then the foe
is at the gates of a city, even so brazen was the voice of the
The Iliad |
