| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles: I Oedipus, your world-renowned king.
Ho! aged sire, whose venerable locks
Proclaim thee spokesman of this company,
Explain your mood and purport. Is it dread
Of ill that moves you or a boon ye crave?
My zeal in your behalf ye cannot doubt;
Ruthless indeed were I and obdurate
If such petitioners as you I spurned.
PRIEST
Yea, Oedipus, my sovereign lord and king,
Thou seest how both extremes of age besiege
Oedipus Trilogy |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Lin McLean by Owen Wister: how the victorious puncher had ridden away across the sunny sagebrush,
bearing the biscuit-shooter with him to the nearest justice of the peace.
She was astride the horse he had brought for her.
"Yes, he beat Tommy," said the Virginian. "Some folks, anyway, get what
they want in this hyeh world."
From which I inferred that Miss Molly Wood was harder to beat than Tommy.
LIN McLEAN'S HONEY-MOON
Rain had not fallen for some sixty days, and for some sixty more there
was no necessity that it should fall. It is spells of weather like this
that set the Western editor writing praise and prophecy of the boundless
fertility of the soil--when irrigated, and of what an Eden it can be
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: Darling! she whispered . . . Darling! . . . Darling! . . . Darling!
Well, I suppose such days can come but once.
Lord, how happy we were! . . .
Here, if you only knew it, is a story--
Here, in these leaves. I stopped my work to tell it,
And then, when I had finished, went on thinking:
A man I saw on a train . . . I was still a boy . . .
Who killed himself by diving against a wall.
Here is a recollection of my wife,
When she was still my sweetheart, years ago.
It's funny how things change,--just change, by growing,
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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 1492 by Mary Johntson: _Santa Maria_, the largest, was fully decked. Small craft
with which to find India, over a road of a thousand leagues
--or no road, for road means that men have toiled there
and traveled there--no road, but a wilderness plain, a
water desert! The Arabians say that Jinn and Afrits live
in the desert away from the caravans. If you go that way
you meet fearful things and never come forth again. The
Santa Maria, the _Pinta_ and the Nina. The Santa Maria
could be Master Christopherus's ship. Bright point that
was his banner could be made out at the fore.
Palos waterside, in a red-filtered dusk, had been a noisy
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