| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: It will awake him in the night,
It will enfold him in the air.
I set my shadow in his sight
And I have winged it with desire,
That it may be a cloud by day,
And in the night a shaft of fire.
A Prayer
Until I lose my soul and lie
Blind to the beauty of the earth,
Deaf though shouting wind goes by,
Dumb in a storm of mirth;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Enemies of Books by William Blades: spread through all lands. On the other hand, as books multiplied,
so did destruction go hand in hand with production, and soon
were printed books doomed to suffer in the same penal fires,
that up to then had been fed on MSS. only.
At Cremona, in 1569, 12,000 books printed in Hebrew were publicly
burnt as heretical, simply on account of their language;
and Cardinal Ximenes, at the capture of Granada, treated 5,000
copies of the Koran in the same way.
At the time of the Reformation in England a great destruction
of books took place. The antiquarian Bale, writing in 1587,
thus speaks of the shameful fate of the Monastic libraries:--
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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 Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe: animal spirits from the heart and overwhelm him.
"For sudden joys, like griefs, confound at first."
I walked about on the shore lifting up my hands, and my whole
being, as I may say, wrapped up in a contemplation of my
deliverance; making a thousand gestures and motions, which I cannot
describe; reflecting upon all my comrades that were drowned, and
that there should not be one soul saved but myself; for, as for
them, I never saw them afterwards, or any sign of them, except
three of their hats, one cap, and two shoes that were not fellows.
I cast my eye to the stranded vessel, when, the breach and froth of
the sea being so big, I could hardly see it, it lay so far of; and
Robinson Crusoe |
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 Professor by Charlotte Bronte: dogged, and in the very irritable mood in which I then was the
sight of Mdlle. Reuter thoroughly incensed me. At the moment I
turned her countenance looked hard, dark, and inquisitive; her
eyes were bent upon me with an expression of almost hungry
curiosity. I had scarcely caught this phase of physiognomy ere
it had vanished; a bland smile played on her features; my harsh
apology was received with good-humoured facility.
"Oh, don't mention it, monsieur; you only touched my hair with
your elbow; it is no worse, only a little dishevelled." She
shook it back, and passing her fingers through her curls,
loosened them into more numerous and flowing ringlets. Then she
The Professor |
