| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Memories and Portraits by Robert Louis Stevenson: would trim a hedge, throw away a favourite plant, or fill the most
favoured and fertile section of the garden with a vegetable that
none of us could eat, in supreme contempt for our opinion. If you
asked him to send you in one of your own artichokes, "THAT I WULL,
MEM," he would say, "WITH PLEASURE, FOR IT IS MAIR BLESSED TO GIVE
THAN TO RECEIVE." Ay, and even when, by extra twisting of the
screw, we prevailed on him to prefer our commands to his own
inclination, and he went away, stately and sad, professing that
"OUR WULL WAS HIS PLEASURE," but yet reminding us that he would do
it "WITH FEELIN'S," - even then, I say, the triumphant master felt
humbled in his triumph, felt that he ruled on sufferance only, that
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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: to him, but there was no answer. All day long he called to her,
and, when the sun set he lay down to sleep on a bed of leaves, and
the birds and the animals fled from him, for they remembered his
cruelty, and he was alone save for the toad that watched him, and
the slow adder that crawled past.
And in the morning he rose up, and plucked some bitter berries from
the trees and ate them, and took his way through the great wood,
weeping sorely. And of everything that he met he made inquiry if
perchance they had seen his mother.
He said to the Mole, 'Thou canst go beneath the earth. Tell me, is
my mother there?'
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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 Some Reminiscences by Joseph Conrad: their natures and perhaps must remain for ever obscure even to
themselves, will be their unconscious response to the still voice
of that inexorable past from which his work of fiction and their
personalities are remotely derived.
Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and
undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme
master of art as of life. An imaginative and exact rendering of
authentic memories may serve worthily that spirit of piety
towards all things human which sanctions the conceptions of a
writer of tales, and the emotions of the man reviewing his own
experience.
Some Reminiscences |
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 Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: I hoped that he would love me,
And he has kissed my mouth,
But I am like a stricken bird
That cannot reach the south.
For tho' I know he loves me,
To-night my heart is sad;
His kiss was not so wonderful
As all the dreams I had.
November
The world is tired, the year is old,
The little leaves are glad to die,
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