| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Elizabeth and her German Garden by Marie Annette Beauchamp: By the time the babies have grown old and disagreeable it will be
very pretty here, and then possibly they won't like it; and, if they
have inherited the Man of Wrath's indifference to gardens, they will let
it run wild and leave it to return to the state in which I found it.
Or perhaps their three husbands will refuse to live in it, or to come
to such a lonely place at all, and then of course its fate is sealed.
My only comfort is that husbands don't flourish in the desert, and that
the three will have to wait a long time before enough are found to go round.
Mothers tell me that it is a dreadful business finding one husband; how much
more painful then to have to look for three at once!--the babies are so nearly
the same age that they only just escaped being twins. But I won't look.
Elizabeth and her German Garden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: All. Our liberties! our privileges! Tell us about our privileges.
Vansen. All the provinces have their peculiar advantages, but we of
Brabant are the most splendidly provided for. I have read it all.
Soest. Say on.
Jetter. Let us hear.
A Citizen. Pray do.
Vansen. First, it stands written:--The Duke of Brabant shall be to us a
good and faithful sovereign.
Soest. Good! Stands it so?
Jetter. Faithful? Is that true?
Vansen. As I tell you. He is bound to us as we are to him. Secondly: In the
Egmont |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: close order, as it were, not in detachments.
[42] "According to our ability," a favourite Socratic phrase.
[43] {authis}. See for this corrupt passage Zurborg, "Comm." p. 31. He
would insert, "and a little delay will not be prejudicial to our
interests, but rather the contrary," or to that effect, thus: {kai
authis an [anutoimen ou gar toiaute te anabole blaben genesthai
an] emin oiometha} "vel simile aliquid."
[44] Or, "it is we who must bear the whole burthen of the outlay."
[45] {outos}, "so far, unless I am mistaken, the easiest method is the
best."
[46] Or, "heavy contributions, subscriptions incidental to," but the
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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 The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: To be a farrier there, or say a dyer;
Or maybe one of your adept surveyors;
Or like enough the wizard of all tanners.
Not you -- no fear of that; for I discern
In you a kindling of the flame that saves --
The nimble element, the true phlogiston;
I see it, and was told of it, moreover,
By our discriminate friend himself, no other.
Had you been one of the sad average,
As he would have it, -- meaning, as I take it,
The sinew and the solvent of our Island,
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