| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Golden Threshold by Sarojini Naidu: prize the gift of laughter as beyond price."
Her desire, always, was to be "a wild free thing of the air like
the birds, with a song in my heart." A spirit of too much fire
in too frail a body, it was rarely that her desire was fully
granted. But in Italy she found what she could not find in
England, and from Italy her letters are radiant. "This Italy is
made of gold," she writes from Florence, "the gold of dawn and
daylight, the gold of the stars, and, now dancing in weird
enchanting rhythms through this magic month of May, the gold of
fireflies in the perfumed darkness--'aerial gold.' I long to
catch the subtle music of their fairy dances and make a poem with
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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 Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: mighty tree. Into that tree, without a word, he strikes a sword
up to the hilt, so that only the might of a hero can withdraw
it. Then he goes out as silently as he came, blind to the truth
that no weapon from the armory of Godhead can serve the turn of
the true Human Hero. Neither Hunding nor any of his guests can
move the sword; and there it stays awaiting the destined hand.
That is the history of the generations between The Rhine Gold and
The Valkyries.
The First Act
This time, as we sit looking expectantly at the curtain, we hear,
not the deep booming of the Rhine, but the patter of a forest
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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 On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: will be a considerable revolution in natural history. Systematists will be
able to pursue their labours as at present; but they will not be
incessantly haunted by the shadowy doubt whether this or that form be in
essence a species. This I feel sure, and I speak after experience, will be
no slight relief. The endless disputes whether or not some fifty species
of British brambles are true species will cease. Systematists will have
only to decide (not that this will be easy) whether any form be
sufficiently constant and distinct from other forms, to be capable of
definition; and if definable, whether the differences be sufficiently
important to deserve a specific name. This latter point will become a far
more essential consideration than it is at present; for differences,
On the Origin of Species |
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 Soul of a Bishop by H. G. Wells: good man in his parish, and he believed that the substitution of
a low churchman would mean a very complete collapse of church
influence in Mogham Banks, where people were now thoroughly
accustomed to a highly ornate service. But Morrice Deans was
intractable and his pursuers indefatigable, and on several
occasions the bishop sat far into the night devising compromises
and equivocations that should make the Kensitites think that
Morrice Deans wasn't wearing vestments when he was, and that
should make Morrice Deans think he was wearing vestments when he
wasn't. And it was Whippham who first suggested green tea as a
substitute for coffee, which gave the bishop indigestion, as his
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