| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Cromwell by William Shakespeare: My heart to you; my soul to heaven I send.
This is my joy that, ere my body fleet,
Your honoured arms is my true winding sheet.
Farewell, dear Bedford; my peace is made in heaven.
Thus falls great Cromwell a poor ell in length,
To rise to unmeasured height, winged with new strength,
The land of Worms, which dying men discover,
My soul is shrined with heaven's celestial cover.
[Exit Cromwell and the officers, and others.]
BEDFORD.
Well, farewell, Cromwell, the truest friend,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: told of the wind-ravaged terrain, the damaged shelters, the disarranged
machinery, the varied uneasiness of our dogs, the missing sledges
and other items, the deaths of men and dogs, the absence of Gedney,
and the six insanely buried biological specimens, strangely sound
in texture for all their structural injuries, from a world forty
million years dead. I do not recall whether I mentioned that upon
checking up the canine bodies we found one dog missing. We did
not think much about that till later - indeed, only Danforth and
I have thought of it at all.
The principal things I have been
keeping back relate to the bodies, and to certain subtle points
At the Mountains of Madness |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The War in the Air by H. G. Wells: water, bawling immensely. The lady was sitting up with her
floriferous hat in her lap, shockingly neglected. The beach,
east and west, was dotted with little people--they seemed all
heads and feet--looking up. And the balloon, released from the
twenty-five stone or so of Mr. Butteridge and his lady, was
rushing up into the sky at the pace of a racing motor-car. "My
crikey!" said Bert; "here's a go!"
He looked down with a pinched face at the receding beach, and
reflected that he wasn't giddy; then he made a superficial survey
of the cords and ropes about him with a vague idea of "doing
something." "I'm not going to mess about with the thing," he
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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 In a German Pension by Katherine Mansfield: We lay curled on the ground while a Hungarian lady of immense proportions
told us what a beautiful tomb she had bought for her second husband.
"A vault it is," she said, "with nice black railings. And so large that I
can go down there and walk about. Both their photographs are there, with
two very handsome wreaths sent me by my first husband's brother. There is
an enlargement of a family group photograph, too, and an illuminated
address presented to my first husband on his marriage. I am often there;
it makes such a pleasant excursion for a fine Saturday afternoon."
She suddenly lay down flat on her back, took in six long breaths, and sat
up again.
"The death agony was dreadful," she said brightly; "of the second, I mean.
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