| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Old Indian Legends by Zitkala-Sa: In the largest teepee sat a young mother wrapping red
porcupine quills about the long fringes of a buckskin cushion.
Beside her lay a black-eyed baby boy cooing and laughing. Reaching
and kicking upward with his tiny hands and feet, he played with the
dangling strings of his heavy-beaded bonnet hanging empty on a tent
pole above him.
At length the mother laid aside her red quills and white
sinew-threads. The babe fell fast asleep. Leaning on one hand and
softly whispering a little lullaby, she threw a light cover over
her baby. It was almost time for the return of her husband.
Remembering there were no willow sticks for the fire, she
|
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: But now doth mount with golden wings of fame,
And will approve fair Isabel's descent,
Able to yoke their stubborn necks with steel,
That spurn against my sovereignty in France.
[Sound a horn.]
A messenger?--Lord Audley, know from whence.
[Exit Audley, and returns.]
AUDLEY.
The Duke of Lorrain, having crossed the seas,
Entreats he may have conference with your highness.
KING EDWARD.
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Figure in the Carpet by Henry James: "That's only my little modesty. It's really an exquisite scheme."
"And you hold that you've carried the scheme out?"
"The way I've carried it out is the thing in life I think a bit
well of myself for."
I had a pause. "Don't you think you ought - just a trifle - to
assist the critic?"
"Assist him? What else have I done with every stroke of my pen?
I've shouted my intention in his great blank face!" At this,
laughing out again, Vereker laid his hand on my shoulder to show
the allusion wasn't to my personal appearance.
"But you talk about the initiated. There must therefore, you see,
|
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 Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin: recklessness, only differing from the true schoolboy's in its
incapacity of being helped, because it acknowledges no master.
There is a curious type of us given in one of the lovely, neglected
works of the last of our great painters. It is a drawing of Kirkby
Lonsdale churchyard, and of its brook, and valley, and hills, and
folded morning sky beyond. And unmindful alike of these, and of the
dead who have left these for other valleys and for other skies, a
group of schoolboys have piled their little books upon a grave, to
strike them off with stones. So, also, we play with the words of
the dead that would teach us, and strike them far from us with our
bitter, reckless will; little thinking that those leaves which the
|
