| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell,
There God is dwelling too.
HOLY THURSDAY
'Twas on a holy Thursday, their innocent faces clean,
The children walking two and two, in red, and blue, and green:
Grey-headed beadles walked before, with wands as white as snow,
Till into the high dome of Paul's they like Thames waters flow.
O what a multitude they seemed, these flowers of London town!
Seated in companies they sit, with radiance all their own.
The hum of multitudes was there, but multitudes of lambs,
Thousands of little boys and girls raising their innocent hands.
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from McTeague by Frank Norris: him. This yere's OUR claim. I guess we got it THIS
tide, pardner. Come on." He gathered up the chunks of
quartz he had broken out, and put them in his hat and
started towards their camp. The two went along with great
strides, hurrying as fast as they could over the uneven
ground.
"I don' know," exclaimed Cribbens, breathlessly, "I don'
want to say too much. Maybe we're fooled. Lord, that damn
camp's a long ways off. Oh, I ain't goin' to fool along
this way. Come on, pardner." He broke into a run.
McTeague followed at a lumbering gallop. Over the scorched,
McTeague |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Stories From the Old Attic by Robert Harris: * A proud man never doubts, even when his nose bleeds.
The Boy and the Vulture
A young boy was playing in the desert with a bow and arrow he had
made, when a vulture, always looking for a tender meal, saw him from
afar. The bird flew over and, seeing that the arrow was only a
barren stick, swooped down and pecked at the boy. "Why don't you
shoot me if you don't like my pecking?" it taunted. The boy shot
his arrow repeatedly, but the bird was too quick, and the arrow
always missed.
Finally, exhausted from chasing the arrow and deflecting the bird,
the boy sat down in the sparse shade of a dead tree. The vulture,
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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 Charmides by Plato: Timaeus, of the infamy which attaches to the name of the latter in Athenian
history. He is simply a cultivated person who, like his kinsman Plato, is
ennobled by the connection of his family with Solon (Tim.), and had been
the follower, if not the disciple, both of Socrates and of the Sophists.
In the argument he is not unfair, if allowance is made for a slight
rhetorical tendency, and for a natural desire to save his reputation with
the company; he is sometimes nearer the truth than Socrates. Nothing in
his language or behaviour is unbecoming the guardian of the beautiful
Charmides. His love of reputation is characteristically Greek, and
contrasts with the humility of Socrates. Nor in Charmides himself do we
find any resemblance to the Charmides of history, except, perhaps, the
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