| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from New Poems by Robert Louis Stevenson: Or should you prove unkind,
A love to hold the growing way
And keep the helping mind:-
A love to turn the laugh on care
When wrinkled care appears,
And, with an equal will, to share
Your losses and your tears.
KNOW YOU THE RIVER NEAR TO GREZ
KNOW you the river near to Grez,
A river deep and clear?
Among the lilies all the way,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Astoria by Washington Irving: instant his gun was leveled and his hand upon the lock. The
Indian drew his bow still further, but forbore to launch the
shaft. Mr. Bradbury, with admirable presence of mind, reflected
that the savage, if hostile in his intents, would have shot him
without giving him a chance of defense; he paused, therefore, and
held out his hand. The other took it in sign of friendship, and
demanded in the Osage language whether he was a Big Knife, or
American. He answered in the affirmative, and inquired whether
the other were a Sioux. To his great relief he found that he was
a Ponca. By his time two other Indians came running up, and all
three laid hold of Mr. Bradbury and seemed disposed to compel him
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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 Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: Great was Bradley's relief when he found the water no more
than waist deep and beneath his feet a firm, gravel bottom.
Feeling his way cautiously he moved downward with the current,
which was not so strong as he had imagined from the noise of
the running water.
Beneath the first arch he made his way, following the winding
curvatures of the right-hand wall. After a few yards of progress
his hand came suddenly in contact with a slimy thing clinging to
the wall--a thing that hissed and scuttled out of reach. What it
was, the man could not know; but almost instantly there was a
splash in the water just ahead of him and then another.
Out of Time's Abyss |
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 Youth by Joseph Conrad: of luck.
"It lasted all down the North Sea, all down Channel;
and it lasted till we were three hundred miles or so to the
westward of the Lizards: then the wind went round to
the sou'west and began to pipe up. In two days it blew
a gale. The Judea, hove to, wallowed on the Atlantic
like an old candlebox. It blew day after day: it blew
with spite, without interval, without mercy, without rest.
The world was nothing but an immensity of great foam-
ing waves rushing at us, under a sky low enough to
touch with the hand and dirty like a smoked ceiling. In
Youth |
