| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: Dreaming alone by day,
The thought of you like a strong wind
Blows the dreams away.
Embers
I said, "My youth is gone
Like a fire beaten out by the rain,
That will never sway and sing
Or play with the wind again."
I said, "It is no great sorrow
That quenched my youth in me,
But only little sorrows
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Polly of the Circus by Margaret Mayo: in the big towns where you have a run."
"Oh, I understand," Douglas answered in a tone of relief. "Well,
I try to say something new each Sunday."
"What kind of spiels do you give 'em?" she inquired with growing
interest.
"I try to help my people to get on better terms with themselves
and to forget their week-day troubles." He had never had
occasion to define his efforts so minutely.
"Well, that's jes' the same as us," Polly told him with an air of
condescension; "only circuses draws more people 'an churches."
"YOURS does seem to be a more popular form of entertainment,"
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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 Sophist by Plato: language and opinion are of the non-partaking class; and he will still
fight to the death against the existence of the image-making and phantastic
art, in which we have placed him, because, as he will say, opinion and
language do not partake of not-being, and unless this participation exists,
there can be no such thing as falsehood. And, with the view of meeting
this evasion, we must begin by enquiring into the nature of language,
opinion, and imagination, in order that when we find them we may find also
that they have communion with not-being, and, having made out the connexion
of them, may thus prove that falsehood exists; and therein we will imprison
the Sophist, if he deserves it, or, if not, we will let him go again and
look for him in another class.
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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 Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Began to droop, to fall; the man became
Imbecile; his one word was `desolate';
Dead for two years before his death was he;
But when the second Christmas came, escaped
His keepers, and the silence which he felt,
To find a deeper in the narrow gloom
By wife and child; nor wanted at his end
The dark retinue reverencing death
At golden thresholds; nor from tender hearts,
And those who sorrow'd o'er a vanish'd race,
Pity, the violet on the tyrant's grave.
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