| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: KING HENRY.
O piteous spectacle! O bloody times!
Whiles lions war and battle for their dens,
Poor harmless lambs abide their enmity.
Weep, wretched man, I'll aid thee tear for tear;
And let our hearts and eyes, like civil war,
Be blind with tears and break o'ercharg'd with grief.
[Enter a Father who has killed his son, with the body in his
arms.]
FATHER.
Thou that so stoutly hath resisted me,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde: desire. Tell me how I can send my soul away from me, for in truth
I have no need of it. Of what value is my soul to me? I cannot
see it. I may not touch it. I do not know it.'
And the Priest beat his breast, and answered, 'Alack, alack, thou
art mad, or hast eaten of some poisonous herb, for the soul is the
noblest part of man, and was given to us by God that we should
nobly use it. There is no thing more precious than a human soul,
nor any earthly thing that can be weighed with it. It is worth all
the gold that is in the world, and is more precious than the rubies
of the kings. Therefore, my son, think not any more of this
matter, for it is a sin that may not be forgiven. And as for the
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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 The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: hour of sunrise when this hated Long Knife was to die.
Only one person offered an insult to the prisoner; he was a man of his own
color. Jim Girty stopped before him, his yellowish eyes lighted by a tigerish
glare, his lips curled in a snarl, and from between them issuing the odor of
the fir traders' vile rum.
"You'll soon be feed fer the buzzards," he croaked, in his hoarse voice. He
had so often strewed the plains with human flesh for the carrion birds that
the thought had a deep fascination for him. "D'ye hear, scalp-hunter? Feed
for buzzards!" He deliberately spat in the hunter's face. "D'ye hear?" he
repeated.
There was no answer save that which glittered in the hunter's eye. But the
The Spirit of the Border |
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 Paradise Lost by John Milton: To battle in the clouds; before each van
Prick forth the airy knights, and couch their spears,
Till thickest legions close; with feats of arms
From either end of heaven the welkin burns.
Others, with vast Typhoean rage, more fell,
Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air
In whirlwind; Hell scarce holds the wild uproar:--
As when Alcides, from Oechalia crowned
With conquest, felt th' envenomed robe, and tore
Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines,
And Lichas from the top of Oeta threw
Paradise Lost |
