| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: As now I see. There comes at last a glimmer
That is not always clouded, or too late.
But I was near and young, and had the reins
To play with while he manned a team so raw
That only God knows where the end had been
Of all that riding without Washington.
There was a nation in the man who passed us,
If there was not a world. I may have driven
Since then some restive horses, and alone,
And through a splashing of abundant mud;
But he who made the dust that sets you on
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: A man (who might be you or me)
Hurls another into the sea.
Poor soul, his unreflecting act
His future joys will much contract,
And he will spoil his evening toddy
By dwelling on that mangled body.
MORAL EMBLEMS II
Poem: I
With storms a-weather, rocks a-lee,
The dancing skiff puts forth to sea.
The lone dissenter in the blast
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau by Honore de Balzac: ball,--his ball, his wedding-ball! He made loving preparation for it,
imitating his old master in necessary expenses, but eschewing all
follies,--follies that were now past and done with. So the dinner was
to be served by Chevet; the guests were to be mostly the same: the
Abbe Loraux replaced the chancellor of the Legion of honor; the
president of the Court of Commerce, Monsieur Lebas, had promised to be
there; Popinot invited Monsieur Camusot in acknowledgment of the
kindness he had bestowed upon Birotteau; Monsieur de Vandenesse and
Monsieur de Fontaine took the place of Roguin and his wife. Cesarine
and Popinot distributed their invitations with much discretion. Both
dreaded the publicity of a wedding, and they escaped the jar such
Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau |
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 Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Are covered either with hides, or else with shells,
Or with the horny callus, or with bark.
Yet this same air lashes their inner parts,
When creatures draw a breath or blow it out.
Wherefore, since body thus is flogged alike
Upon the inside and the out, and blows
Come in upon us through the little pores
Even inward to our body's primal parts
And primal elements, there comes to pass
By slow degrees, along our members then,
A kind of overthrow; for then confounded
Of The Nature of Things |
