| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: to kill me hung back out of reach of the axe.
"Here with the king is no place for me any more, my son," I said to
Umslopogaas.
"Fear not, my father, I will find you a place," he answered.
Then I called a message to the soldiers who followed me, saying:--
"Tell this to the king: that he has done ill to drive me from him, for
I, Mopo, set him on the throne and I alone can hold him there. Tell
him this also, that he will do yet worse to seek me where I am, for
that day when we are once more face to face shall be his day of death.
Thus speaks Mopo the inyanga, Mopo the doctor, who never yet
prophesied that which should not be."
Nada the Lily |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: battle, he should have still the energy to fight. He had gone to
ruin with a kind of kingly ABANDON, like one who condescended; but
once ruined, with the lights all out, he fought as for a kingdom.
Most men, finding themselves the authors of their own disgrace,
rail the louder against God or destiny. Most men, when they
repent, oblige their friends to share the bitterness of that
repentance. But he had held an inquest and passed sentence: MENE,
MENE; and condemned himself to smiling silence. He had given
trouble enough; had earned misfortune amply, and foregone the right
to murmur.
Thus was our old comrade, like Samson, careless in his days of
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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 Mistress Wilding by Rafael Sabatini: husband," he said with grave humour. "Why seek now to overcloud that
fact? I mind me that the last time we met you called me by another name.
But it may be," he added as an afterthought, "you are of opinion that I
have broken faith with you."
"Broken faith? As how?"
"So!" he said, and sighed. "My words were of so little account that
they have been, I see, forgotten. Yet, so that I remember them, that
is what chiefly matters. I promised then - or seemed to promise - that
I would make a widow of you, who had made a wife of you against your
will. It has not happened yet. Do not despair. This Monmouth quarrel
is not yet fought out. Hope on, my Ruth."
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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 Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: and toleration? Should I not thus lose all credit with him, and at once
forfeit his confidence?
Machiavel. I know it. The king commands and puts you in full possession
of his intentions. You are to restore tranquillity and peace by measures
which cannot fail still more to embitter men's minds, and which must
inevitably kindle the flames of war from one extremity of the country to
the other. Consider well what you are doing. The principal merchants are
infected--nobles, citizens, soldiers. What avails persisting in our opinion,
when everything is changing around us? Oh, that some good genius would
suggest to Philip that it better becomes a monarch to govern burghers of
two different creeds, than to excite them to mutual destruction.
Egmont |
