| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: And to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so." --
"Tell me what you're saying to me now, John Gorham,
Or you'll never see as much of me as ribbons any more;
I'll vanish in as many ways as I have toes and fingers,
And you'll not follow far for one where flocks have been before." --
"I'm sorry now you never saw the flocks, Jane Wayland,
But you're the one to make of them as many as you need.
And then about the vanishing. It's I who mean to vanish;
And when I'm here no longer you'll be done with me indeed." --
"That's a way to tell me what I am, John Gorham!
How am I to know myself until I make you smile?
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche: But nevertheless I walk with my thoughts ABOVE their heads; and even should
I walk on mine own errors, still would I be above them and their heads.
For men are NOT equal: so speaketh justice. And what I will, THEY may not
will!--
Thus spake Zarathustra.
XXXIX. POETS.
"Since I have known the body better"--said Zarathustra to one of his
disciples--"the spirit hath only been to me symbolically spirit; and all
the 'imperishable'--that is also but a simile."
"So have I heard thee say once before," answered the disciple, "and then
thou addedst: 'But the poets lie too much.' Why didst thou say that the
Thus Spake Zarathustra |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Wheels of Chance by H. G. Wells: He had to get those bicycles. Had he been told to go out and kill
Bechamel he would have done it. His head was a MaeIstrom now. He
walked out of the hotel, along the front, and into the big,
blackshadowed coach yard. He looked round. There were no bicycles
visible. Then a man emerged from the dark, a short man in a
short, black, shiny jacket. Hoopdriver was caught. He made no
attempt to turn and run for it. "I've been giving your machines a
wipe over, sir," said the man, recognising the suit, and touching
his cap. Hoopdriver's intelligence now was a soaring eagle; he
swooped on the situation at once. "That's right," he said, and
added, before the pause became marked, "Where is mine? I want to
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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 Hamlet by William Shakespeare: What company, at what expence: and finding
By this encompassement and drift of question,
That they doe know my sonne: Come you more neerer
Then your particular demands will touch it,
Take you as 'twere some distant knowledge of him,
And thus I know his father and his friends,
And in part him. Doe you marke this Reynoldo?
Reynol. I, very well my Lord
Polon. And in part him, but you may say not well;
But if't be hee I meane, hees very wilde;
Addicted so and so; and there put on him
Hamlet |
