| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Heap O' Livin' by Edgar A. Guest: much to say.
I like to read the papers, but I do not yearn
to see
What the journal of the morning has been
moved to say of me;
In the silences and shadows I would live my
life and die
And depend for fond remembrance on some
grateful passers-by.
I guess I wasn't fashioned for the brilliant
things of earth,
A Heap O' Livin' |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Muse of the Department by Honore de Balzac: "There is in Dinah," said Etienne to Bixiou, "the stuff to make both a
Ninon and a De Stael."
"A woman who combines an encyclopaedia and a seraglio is very
dangerous," replied the mocking spirit.
When the expected infant became a visible fact, Madame de la Baudraye
would be seen no more; but before shutting herself up, never to go out
unless into the country, she was bent on being present at the first
performance of a play by Nathan. This literary solemnity occupied the
minds of the two thousand persons who regard themselves as
constituting "all Paris." Dinah, who had never been at a first night's
performance, was very full of natural curiosity. She had by this time
The Muse of the Department |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas Day.
They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
"All hands to loose topgallant sails," I heard the captain call.
"By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate, Jackson, cried.
. . . "It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.
She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the night,
We cleared the weary headland, and passed below the light.
And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but me,
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
Ballads |
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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: and can hear a voice which said at first, "Let us make man in our
image;" and hath said since then, and says for ever and for ever,
"Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world."
But now, friend, who listenest, perhaps instructed, and at least
amused - if, as Professor Harvey well says, the simpler animals
represent, as in a glass, the scattered organs of the higher races,
which of your organs is represented by that "sca'd man's head,"
which the Devon children more gracefully, yet with less adherence
to plain likeness, call "mermaid's head," (12) which we picked up
just now on Paignton Sands? Or which, again, by its more beautiful
little congener, (13) five or six of which are adhering tightly to
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