| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: Outfacing faults in love with love's ill rest.
But wherefore says my love that she is young?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is a soothing tongue,
And age, in love, loves not to have years told.
Therefore, I'll lie with love, and love with me,
Since that our faults in love thus smother'd be.
II.
Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
That like two spirits do suggest me still;
My better angel is a man right fair,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: I know him as a fisherman.
The March of Mortality
Over the hills of time to the valley of endless years;
Over the roads of woe to the land that is free from tears
Up from the haunts of men to the place where the angels are,
This is the march of mortality to a wonderful goal afar.
Troopers we are in life, warring at times with wrong,
But promised ever unbroken rest at last in a land of song;
And whether we serve or rule, and whether we fall or rise,
We shall come, in time, to that golden vale where never the spirit dies.
Back of the strife for gain, and under the toil for fame,
Just Folks |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx: fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie and ever renewing
itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The
individual members of this class, however, are being constantly
hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition,
and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment
approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent
section of modern society, to be replaced, in manufactures,
agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.
In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more
than half of the population, it was natural that writers who
sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, should use,
The Communist Manifesto |
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 Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: people who sing because they must.
The memory of my mother singing, has made my whole life sweet.
When blue days came for me, and hardship almost forced me to
despair, I turned my thoughts to her, singing as she rocked a
cradle, and from her spirit my own heart took hope again. I think
the reason I have never cared for drink is this: the ease from
mental pain that other men have sought in alcohol, I always found
in song.
CHAPTER V
THE LOST FEATHER BED
I didn't care very much for day school. The whipping that I got
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