| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Tales of Unrest by Joseph Conrad: forget their dead predecessor; but, early one day, Carlier went out
and replanted the cross firmly. "It used to make me squint whenever I
walked that way," he explained to Kayerts over the morning coffee. "It
made me squint, leaning over so much. So I just planted it upright.
And solid, I promise you! I suspended myself with both hands to the
cross-piece. Not a move. Oh, I did that properly."
At times Gobila came to see them. Gobila was the chief of the
neighbouring villages. He was a gray-headed savage, thin and black,
with a white cloth round his loins and a mangy panther skin hanging
over his back. He came up with long strides of his skeleton legs,
swinging a staff as tall as himself, and, entering the common room of
Tales of Unrest |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde: instinct to things. I feel to-night that I have saved you from
something that might have been a danger to you, from something that
might have made men honour you less than they do. I don't think you
realise sufficiently, Robert, that you have brought into the
political life of our time a nobler atmosphere, a finer attitude
towards life, a freer air of purer aims and higher ideals - I know
it, and for that I love you, Robert.
SIR ROBERT CHILTERN. Oh, love me always, Gertrude, love me always!
LADY CHILTERN. I will love you always, because you will always be
worthy of love. We needs must love the highest when we see it!
[Kisses him and rises and goes out.]
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Long Odds by H. Rider Haggard: was very sore from the cub's tongue, I took the driver, Tom, who did not
half like the business, and having armed myself with an ordinary double
No. 12 smoothbore, the first breechloader I ever had, I started. I took
the smoothbore because it shot a bullet very well; and my experience has
been that a round ball from a smoothbore is quite as effective against a
lion as an express bullet. The lion is soft, and not a difficult animal
to finish if you hit him anywhere in the body. A buck takes far more
killing.
"Well, I started, and the first thing I set to work to do was to try to
discover whereabouts the brutes lay up for the day. About three hundred
yards from the waggon was the crest of a rise covered with single mimosa
Long Odds |
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 Macbeth by William Shakespeare: Why doe you dresse me in borrowed Robes?
Ang. Who was the Thane, liues yet,
But vnder heauie Iudgement beares that Life,
Which he deserues to loose.
Whether he was combin'd with those of Norway,
Or did lyne the Rebell with hidden helpe,
And vantage; or that with both he labour'd
In his Countreyes wracke, I know not:
But Treasons Capitall, confess'd, and prou'd,
Haue ouerthrowne him
Macb. Glamys, and Thane of Cawdor:
Macbeth |
