| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake: Lovely Lyca lay.
Seven summers old
Lovely Lyca told.
She had wandered long,
Hearing wild birds' song.
'Sweet sleep, come to me,
Underneath this tree;
Do father, mother, weep?
Where can Lyca sleep?
'Lost in desert wild
Is your little child.
Songs of Innocence and Experience |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Between the waving poplars and the sea
Which men call Artemisium, till he saw Thermopylae
Its steep ravine spanned by a narrow wall,
And on the nearer side a little brood
Of careless lions holding festival!
And stood amazed at such hardihood,
And pitched his tent upon the reedy shore,
And stayed two days to wonder, and then crept at midnight o'er
Some unfrequented height, and coming down
The autumn forests treacherously slew
What Sparta held most dear and was the crown
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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 Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson by Robert Louis Stevenson: overstrained laxity, besides disgusting, like a grimace, may do
harm. Nothing that I have ever seen yet speaks directly and
efficaciously to young men; and I do hope I may find the art and
wisdom to fill up a gap. The great point, as I see it, is to ask
as little as possible, and meet, if it may be, every view or
absence of view; and it should be, must be, easy. Honesty is the
one desideratum; but think how hard a one to meet. I think all the
time of Ferrier and myself; these are the pair that I address.
Poor Ferrier, so much a better man than I, and such a temporal
wreck. But the thing of which we must divest our minds is to look
partially upon others; all is to be viewed; and the creature
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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 Montezuma's Daughter by H. Rider Haggard: and set upon the stake that is known as "post of heads."'
Now when I heard this dreadful doom I groaned aloud and my knees
trembled so that I almost fell to the ground. Then a great fury
seized me and, forgetting my father's counsel, I blasphemed the
gods of that country and the people who worshipped them, first in
the Aztec and Maya languages, then when my knowledge of these
tongues failed me, in Spanish and good English. But Otomie, who
heard some of my words and guessed more, was seized with fear and
lifted her hands, saying:
'Curse not the awful gods, I beseech you, lest some terrible thing
befall you at once. If you are overheard it will be thought that
Montezuma's Daughter |
