| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Anointed once Perenna's orchard wood.
Thence the Flaminian, the Salarian way,
Stretch far broad below the dome of day;
And lo! the traveller toiling towards his home;
And all unheard, the chariot speeds to Rome!
For here no whisper of the wheels; and tho'
The Mulvian Bridge, above the Tiber's flow,
Hangs all in sight, and down the sacred stream
The sliding barges vanish like a dream,
The seaman's shrilling pipe not enters here,
Nor the rude cries of porters on the pier.
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walking by Henry David Thoreau: from the meadows, and deepens the soil--not that which trusts to
heating manures, and improved implements and modes of culture
only!
Many a poor sore-eyed student that I have heard of would grow
faster, both intellectually and physically, if, instead of
sitting up so very late, he honestly slumbered a fool's
allowance.
There may be an excess even of informing light. Niepce, a
Frenchman, discovered "actinism," that power in the sun's rays
which produces a chemical effect; that granite rocks, and stone
structures, and statues of metal "are all alike destructively
Walking |
