| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: But we sit quiet and wait, as the fowler sits by the snare,
And tranquilly fold our hands, till the pigs come nosing the food:
But meanwhile build us a house of Trotea, the stubborn wood,
Bind it with incombustible thongs, set a roof to the room,
Too strong for the hands of a man to dissever or fire to consume;
And there, when the pigs come trotting, there shall the feast be spread,
There shall the eye of the morn enlighten the feasters dead.
So be it done; for I have a heart that pities your state,
And Nateva and Namunu-ura are fire and water for hate."
All was done as he said, and the gardens prospered; and now
The fame of their plenty went out, and word of it came to Vaiau.
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo: Under the Caesars, there is the exile to Syene; there is also
the man of the Annales. We do not speak of the immense exile
of Patmos who, on his part also, overwhelms the real world with a
protest in the name of the ideal world, who makes of his vision
an enormous satire and casts on Rome-Nineveh, on Rome-Babylon,
on Rome-Sodom, the flaming reflection of the Apocalypse. John on
his rock is the sphinx on its pedestal; we may understand him,
he is a Jew, and it is Hebrew; but the man who writes the Annales
is of the Latin race, let us rather say he is a Roman.
As the Neros reign in a black way, they should be painted to match.
The work of the graving-tool alone would be too pale; there must be
Les Miserables |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: The April baby, who has had a nursery governess of an altogether
alarmingly zealous type <136> attached to her person for the last six weeks,
looked up from her bread and milk.
"It sounds like islands," she remarked pensively.
The governess coughed.
"Majora, Minora, Alderney, and Sark," explained her pupil.
I looked at her severely.
"If you are not careful, April," I said, "you'll be a genius
when you grow up and disgrace your parents."
Miss Jones looked as though she did not like Germans.
I am afraid she despises us because she thinks we are foreigners--
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
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 A Simple Soul by Gustave Flaubert: lunch basket and they would sit down and eat in a room next to the
dairy. This room was all that remained of a cottage that had been torn
down. The dilapidated wall-paper trembled in the drafts. Madame
Aubain, overwhelmed by recollections, would hang her head, while the
children were afraid to open their mouths. Then, "Why don't you go and
play?" their mother would say; and they would scamper off.
Paul would go to the old barn, catch birds, throw stones into the
pond, or pound the trunks of the trees with a stick till they
resounded like drums. Virginia would feed the rabbits and run to pick
the wild flowers in the fields, and her flying legs would disclose her
little embroidered pantalettes. One autumn evening, they struck out
A Simple Soul |
