| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Iliad by Homer: bravest of the Achaeans."
With this the son of Peleus dashed his gold-bestudded sceptre on
the ground and took his seat, while the son of Atreus was
beginning fiercely from his place upon the other side. Then
uprose smooth-tongued Nestor, the facile speaker of the Pylians,
and the words fell from his lips sweeter than honey. Two
generations of men born and bred in Pylos had passed away under
his rule, and he was now reigning over the third. With all
sincerity and goodwill, therefore, he addressed them thus:--
"Of a truth," he said, "a great sorrow has befallen the Achaean
land. Surely Priam with his sons would rejoice, and the Trojans
The Iliad |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Padre Ignacio by Owen Wister: Paris and fondly learning of the later Paris that the guest had seen. And
thus the two lingered, exchanging their enthusiasms, while the candles
waned, and the long-haired Indians stood silent behind the chairs.
"But we must go to my piano," the host exclaimed. For at length they had
come to a lusty difference of opinion. The Padre, with ears critically
deaf, and with smiling, unconvinced eyes, was shaking his head, while
young Gaston sang Trovatore at him, and beat upon the table with a fork.
"Come and convert me, then," said Padre Ignacio, and he led the way.
"Donizetti I have always admitted. There, at least, is refinement. If the
world has taken to this Verdi, with his street-band music--But there,
now! Sit down and convert me. Only don't crush my poor little Erard with
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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 Maid Marian by Thomas Love Peacock: summer wind, which, however lightly it wave the tuft of the pine,
carries with it the intimation of a power, that, if roused
to its extremity, could make it bend to the dust."
"From the warmth of your panegyric, ghostly father," said the knight,
"I should almost suspect you were in love with the damsel."
"So I am," said the friar, "and I care not who knows it;
but all in the way of honesty, master soldier. I am,
as it were, her spiritual lover; and were she a damsel errant,
I would be her ghostly esquire, her friar militant.
I would buckle me in armour of proof, and the devil might thresh me
black with an iron flail, before I would knock under in her cause.
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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 Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: know that she is as amusing as she was when she was a child,
but she makes me love her and I like people who make me love them.
It saves me so much trouble in making myself love them."
Then, almost before anybody realized it, spring had come;
out in Avonlea the Mayflowers were peeping pinkly out
on the sere barrens where snow-wreaths lingered; and
the "mist of green" was on the woods and in the valleys.
But in Charlottetown harassed Queen's students thought
and talked only of examinations.
"It doesn't seem possible that the term is nearly over,"
said Anne. "Why, last fall it seemed so long to look
Anne of Green Gables |
