| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: How now, my lords! what, all unready so?
BASTARD.
Unready! aye, and glad we 'scap'd so well.
REIGNIER.
'Twas time, I trow, to wake and leave our beds,
Hearing alarums at our chamber-doors.
ALENCON.
Of all exploits since first I follow'd arms,
Ne'er heard I of a warlike enterprise
More venturous or desperate than this.
BASTARD.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: bullet that killed with the stroke, but that they really had the infection
in their blood long before; only, that as it preyed secretly on the vitals,
it appeared not till it seized the heart with a mortal power, and the
patient died in a moment, as with a sudden fainting or an apoplectic fit.
I know that some even of our physicians thought for a time that
those people that so died in the streets were seized but that moment
they fell, as if they had been touched by a stroke from heaven as men
are killed by a flash of lightning - but they found reason to alter their
opinion afterward; for upon examining the bodies of such after they
were dead, they always either had tokens upon them or other evident
proofs of the distemper having been longer upon them than they had
A Journal of the Plague Year |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Cavalry General by Xenophon: cannot endure fatigue will clearly be unable to overhaul the foeman or
effect escape;[6] and in the second place, you will have to see to it
the animals are tractable, since, clearly again, a horse that will not
obey is only fighting for the enemy and not his friends. So, again, an
animal that kicks when mounted must be cast; since brutes of that sort
may often do more mischief than the foe himself. Lastly, you must pay
attention to the horses' feet, and see that they will stand being
ridden over rough ground. A horse, one knows, is practically useless
where he cannot be galloped without suffering.
[5] Lit. "in process of being raised."
[6] Or, "to press home a charge a l'outrance, or retire from the field
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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 A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill.
Years may go by, and the wheel in the river
Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever
Long after all of the boys are away.
Home for the Indies and home from the ocean,
Heroes and soldiers we all will come home;
Still we shall find the old mill wheel in motion,
Turning and churning that river to foam.
You with the bean that I gave when we quarrelled,
I with your marble of Saturday last,
A Child's Garden of Verses |
