| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Aeneid by Virgil: And, O! I wish, contented with my cares
Of salvage spoils, she had not sought the wars!
Then had she been of my celestial train,
And shunn'd the fate that dooms her to be slain.
But since, opposing Heav'n's decree, she goes
To find her death among forbidden foes,
Haste with these arms, and take thy steepy flight.
Where, with the gods, averse, the Latins fight.
This bow to thee, this quiver I bequeath,
This chosen arrow, to revenge her death:
By whate'er hand Camilla shall be slain,
Aeneid |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Othello by William Shakespeare: We loose it not so long as we can smile:
He beares the Sentence well, that nothing beares,
But the free comfort which from thence he heares.
But he beares both the Sentence, and the sorrow,
That to pay griefe, must of poore Patience borrow.
These Sentences, to Sugar, or to Gall,
Being strong on both sides, are Equiuocall.
But words are words, I neuer yet did heare:
That the bruized heart was pierc'd through the eares.
I humbly beseech you proceed to th' Affaires of State
Duke. The Turke with a most mighty Preparation
Othello |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Copy-Cat & Other Stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: anything about it."
"If they ask me?"
"Anyway, you can hold your tongue. You know
it isn't wicked to hold your tongue."
Little Lucy absurdly stuck out the pointed tip of
her little red tongue. Then she shook her head
slowly.
"Well," she said, "I will hold my tongue."
This encounter with innocence and logic had left
him worsted. Jim could see no way out of the fact
that his father, the rector, his mother, the rector's
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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 On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: some even of these were not perfectly true. Yet the pistil of each
cabbage-flower is surrounded not only by its own six stamens, but by those
of the many other flowers on the same plant. How, then, comes it that such
a vast number of the seedlings are mongrelized? I suspect that it must
arise from the pollen of a distinct variety having a prepotent effect over
a flower's own pollen; and that this is part of the general law of good
being derived from the intercrossing of distinct individuals of the same
species. When distinct species are crossed the case is directly the
reverse, for a plant's own pollen is always prepotent over foreign pollen;
but to this subject we shall return in a future chapter.
In the case of a gigantic tree covered with innumerable flowers, it may be
On the Origin of Species |
