| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: But, while I look upon thy loveliness,
The hours fly like winged Mercuries
And leave existence golden.
DUCHESS
I did not think
I should be ever loved: do you indeed
Love me so much as now you say you do?
GUIDO
Ask of the sea-bird if it loves the sea,
Ask of the roses if they love the rain,
Ask of the little lark, that will not sing
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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 Patchwork Girl of Oz by L. Frank Baum: The Tin Woodman wanted to know, first of
all, where Dorothy had found the Patchwork
Girl, so between them the visitors told the story
of how Scraps was made, as well as the accident
to Margolotte and Unc Nunkie and how Ojo
had set out upon a journey to procure the things
needed for the Crooked Magician's magic
charm. Then Dorothy told of their adventures
in the Quadling Country and how at last they
succeeded in getting the water from a dark well.
While the little girl was relating these
The Patchwork Girl of Oz |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: And would corrupt my saint to be a devil,
Wooing his purity with her fair pride.
And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend,
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell:
For being both to me, both to each friend,
I guess one angel in another's hell:
The truth I shall not know, but live in doubt,
Till my bad angel fire my good one out.
III.
Did not the heavenly rhetoric of thine eye,
'Gainst whom the world could not hold argument.
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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 Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: ailments, which kept him hobbling in and out of the room; one foot
gouty; a wig for decency, not for deception, on his head; close
shaved, except under his chin - and for that he never failed to
apologise, for it went sore against the traditions of his life.
You can imagine how he would fare in a novel by Miss Mather; yet
this rag of a Chelsea veteran lived to his last year in the
plenitude of all that is best in man, brimming with human kindness,
and staunch as a Roman soldier under his manifold infirmities. You
could not say that he had lost his memory, for he would repeat
Shakespeare and Webster and Jeremy Taylor and Burke by the page
together; but the parchment was filled up, there was no room for
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