| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Poems by Oscar Wilde: And Ruin draws the curtains of my bed.
But all this crowded life has been to thee
No more than lyre, or lute, or subtle spell
Of viols, or the music of the sea
That sleeps, a mimic echo, in the shell.
Poem: Taedium Vitae
To stab my youth with desperate knives, to wear
This paltry age's gaudy livery,
To let each base hand filch my treasury,
To mesh my soul within a woman's hair,
And be mere Fortune's lackeyed groom, - I swear
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Battle of the Books by Jonathan Swift: ill prophet nor an ill counsellor; for it was nothing else but the
neglect of this caution which gave occasion to the terrible fight
that happened on Friday last between the Ancient and Modern Books
in the King's library. Now, because the talk of this battle is so
fresh in everybody's mouth, and the expectation of the town so
great to be informed in the particulars, I, being possessed of all
qualifications requisite in an historian, and retained by neither
party, have resolved to comply with the urgent importunity of my
friends, by writing down a full impartial account thereof.
The guardian of the regal library, a person of great valour, but
chiefly renowned for his humanity, had been a fierce champion for
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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: their agonies and distress, and that I could make him that reads this
hear, as I imagine I now hear them, for the sound seems still to ring in
my ears.
If I could but tell this part in such moving accents as should alarm
the very soul of the reader, I should rejoice that I recorded those
things, however short and imperfect.
It pleased God that I was still spared, and very hearty and sound in
health, but very impatient of being pent up within doors without air,
as I had been for fourteen days or thereabouts; and I could not restrain
myself, but I would go to carry a letter for my brother to the post-
house. Then it was indeed that I observed a profound silence in the
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 Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft: sleep. The old deserted Chapman house had inexplicably burned
to an amorphous heap of ashes; that we could understand because
of the upset lamp. Also, an attempt had been made to disturb a
new grave in the potter’s field, as if by futile and spadeless
clawing at the earth. That we could not understand, for we had
patted down the mould very carefully.
And for seventeen years
after that West would look frequently over his shoulder, and complain
of fancied footsteps behind him. Now he has disappeared.
II.
The Plague-Daemon
Herbert West: Reanimator |
