| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Othello by William Shakespeare: Cas. Alas poore Rogue, I thinke indeed she loues me
Oth. Now he denies it faintly: and laughes it out
Iago. Do you heare Cassio?
Oth. Now he importunes him
To tell it o're: go too, well said, well said
Iago. She giues it out, that you shall marry her.
Do you intend it?
Cas. Ha, ha, ha
Oth. Do ye triumph, Romaine? do you triumph?
Cas. I marry. What? A customer; prythee beare
Some Charitie to my wit, do not thinke it
Othello |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Secret Places of the Heart by H. G. Wells: something he found out or imagined? "
Parting had disappeared as a possible solution of this
problem. She and he had got into each other's lives to stay:
the real problem was the terms upon which they were to stay
in each other's lives. Close association had brought them to
the point of being, in the completest sense, lovers; that
could not be; and the real problem was the transmutation of
their relationship to some form compatible with his honour
and her happiness. A word, an idea, from some recent reading
floated into Sir Richmond's head. "Sublimate," he whispered.
"We have to sublimate this affair. We have to put this
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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 Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: murders and engaging in hand-to-hand combats. And Hamlet, who does
not dream of apologizing for the three murders he commits, is always
apologizing because he has not yet committed a fourth, and finds, to
his great bewilderment, that he does not want to commit it. "It
cannot be," he says, "but I am pigeon-livered, and lack gall to make
oppression bitter; else, ere this, I should have fatted all the region
kites with this slave's offal." Really one is tempted to suspect that
when Shylock asks "Hates any man the thing he would not kill?" he is
expressing the natural and proper sentiments of the human race as
Shakespear understood them, and not the vindictiveness of a stage Jew.
Gaiety of Genius
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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 Verses 1889-1896 by Rudyard Kipling: The bullets bit on bend and butt, the splinter slivered free
(Little they trust to sparrow-dust that stop the seal in his sea!),
The thick smoke hung and would not shift, leaden it lay and blue,
But three were down on the ~Baltic~'s deck and two of the ~Stralsund~'s crew.
An arm's-length out and overside the banked fog held them bound,
But, as they heard or groan or word, they fired at the sound.
For one cried out on the Name of God, and one to have him cease,
And the questing volley found them both and bade them hold their peace;
And one called out on a heathen joss and one on the Virgin's Name,
And the schooling bullet leaped across and showed them whence they came.
And in the waiting silences the rudder whined beneath,
Verses 1889-1896 |
