| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot: Slipped out and pocketed a toy that was running along the quay.
I could see nothing behind that child’s eye.
I have seen eyes in the street
Trying to peer through lighted shutters,
And a crab one afternoon in a pool,
An old crab with barnacles on his back,
Gripped the end of a stick which I held him.
Half-past three,
The lamp sputtered,
The lamp muttered in the dark.
The lamp hummed:
Prufrock/Other Observations |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Marie by H. Rider Haggard: Pereira burst out laughing.
"Here, friends," he called to some of the Boers who were strolling up to
the house for their morning coffee. "This little Englishman wants to
shoot a match with me, staking that fine mare of his against a hundred
pounds British; against me, Hernando Pereira, who have won every prize
at shooting that ever I entered for. No, no, friend Allan, I am not a
thief, I will not rob you of your mare."
Now among those Boers chanced to be the celebrated Heer Pieter Retief, a
very fine man of high character, then in the prime of life, and of
Huguenot descent like Heer Marais. He had been appointed by the
Government one of the frontier commandants, but owing to some quarrel
Marie |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from A Treatise on Parents and Children by George Bernard Shaw: tired. Music after dinner is pleasant: music before breakfast is so
unpleasant as to be clearly unnatural. To people who are not
overworked holidays are a nuisance. To people who are, and who can
afford them, they are a troublesome necessity. A perpetual holiday is
a good working definition of hell.
The Horror of the Perpetual Holiday
It will be said here that, on the contrary, heaven is always conceived
as a perpetual holiday, and that whoever is not born to an independent
income is striving for one or longing for one because it gives
holidays for life. To which I reply, first, that heaven, as
conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so
|
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 Egmont by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe: honest fellow has already fallen into their clutches. They had not gone so
far as to meddle with conscience! If they will not allow me to do what I
like, they might at least let me think and sing as I please.
Soest. The Inquisition won't do here. We are not made like the Spaniards,
to let our consciences be tyrannized over. The nobles must look to it, and
clip its wings betimes.
Jetter. It is a great bore. Whenever it comes into their worships' heads to
break into my house, and I am sitting there at my work, humming a French
psalm, thinking nothing about it, neither good nor bad--singing it just
because it is in my throat;--forthwith I'm a heretic, and am clapped into
prison. Or if I am passing through the country, and stand near a crowd
Egmont |
