| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: His gift it is that, as your eyes may see,
My kine may roam at large, and I myself
Play on my shepherd's pipe what songs I will.
MELIBOEUS
I grudge you not the boon, but marvel more,
Such wide confusion fills the country-side.
See, sick at heart I drive my she-goats on,
And this one, O my Tityrus, scarce can lead:
For 'mid the hazel-thicket here but now
She dropped her new-yeaned twins on the bare flint,
Hope of the flock- an ill, I mind me well,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Records of a Family of Engineers by Robert Louis Stevenson: sailed by these islands in the past, how many vikings had
landed, and raised turmoil, and broken up the barrows of the
dead, and carried off the wines of the living; and blame them,
if you are able, for that belief (which may be called one of
the parables of the devil's gospel) that a man rescued from
the sea will prove the bane of his deliverer. It might be
thought that my grandfather, coming there unknown, and upon an
employment so hateful to the inhabitants, must have run the
hazard of his life. But this were to misunderstand. He came
franked by the laird and the clergyman; he was the King's
officer; the work was `opened with prayer by the Rev. Walter
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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 Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: Even to the bottom of thy master's throat.
And, be it spoke with reverence of the King,
My gracious father, and these other Lords,
I hold thy message but as scurrilous,
And him that sent thee, like the lazy drone,
Crept up by stealth unto the Eagle's nest;
>From whence we'll shake him with so rough a storm,
As others shall be warned by his harm.
WARWICK.
Bid him leave of the Lyons case he wears,
Least, meeting with the Lyon in the field,
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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 The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle: and that from each they would take that which had been wrung from
the poor by unjust taxes, or land rents, or in wrongful fines.
But to the poor folk they would give a helping hand in need and trouble,
and would return to them that which had been unjustly taken from them.
Besides this, they swore never to harm a child nor to wrong a woman,
be she maid, wife, or widow; so that, after a while, when the people
began to find that no harm was meant to them, but that money or food
came in time of want to many a poor family, they came to praise Robin
and his merry men, and to tell many tales of him and of his doings
in Sherwood Forest, for they felt him to be one of themselves.
Up rose Robin Hood one merry morn when all the birds were singing blithely
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood |
