| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: Dusty and dim are the eyes of the miller,
Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill.
Years may go by, and the wheel in the river
Wheel as it wheels for us, children, to-day,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever
Long after all of the boys are away.
Home for the Indies and home from the ocean,
Heroes and soldiers we all will come home;
Still we shall find the old mill wheel in motion,
Turning and churning that river to foam.
You with the bean that I gave when we quarrelled,
A Child's Garden of Verses |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain: for it is good." The Reverend took in the situation--alas,
they were playing the Expulsion from Eden! Yet he found
one little crumb of comfort. He said to himself, "For once
Jimmy has yielded the chief role--I have been wronging him,
I did not believe there was so much modesty in him;
I should have expected him to be either Adam or Eve."
This crumb of comfort lasted but a very little while;
he glanced around and discovered Jimmy standing in an
imposing attitude in a corner, with a dark and deadly frown
on his face. What that meant was very plain--HE WAS
IMPERSONATING THE DEITY! Think of the guileless sublimity 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 A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: in Wood Street, one in Fenchurch Street, and two in Crooked Lane.
Southwark was entirely free, having not one yet died on that side of
the water.
I lived without Aldgate, about midway between Aldgate Church and
Whitechappel Bars, on the left hand or north side of the street; and as
the distemper had not reached to that side of the city, our
neighbourhood continued very easy. But at the other end of the town
their consternation was very great: and the richer sort of people,
especially the nobility and gentry from the west part of the city,
thronged out of town with their families and servants in an unusual
manner; and this was more particularly seen in Whitechappel; that is to
A Journal of the Plague Year |
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 The Island of Doctor Moreau by H. G. Wells: the heat of it, and the heat of the midday sun, watching. All day I
watched that sail, eating or drinking nothing, so that my head reeled;
and the Beasts came and glared at me, and seemed to wonder,
and went away. It was still distant when night came and swallowed
it up; and all night I toiled to keep my blaze bright and high,
and the eyes of the Beasts shone out of the darkness, marvelling.
In the dawn the sail was nearer, and I saw it was the dirty
lug-sail of a small boat. But it sailed strangely. My eyes were
weary with watching, and I peered and could not believe them.
Two men were in the boat, sitting low down,--one by the bows,
the other at the rudder. The head was not kept to the wind; it yawed and
The Island of Doctor Moreau |
