| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: To cast beyond our selues in our Opinions,
As it is common for the yonger sort
To lacke discretion. Come, go we to the King,
This must be knowne, being kept close might moue
More greefe to hide, then hate to vtter loue.
Exeunt.
Scena Secunda.
Enter King, Queene, Rosincrane, and Guildensterne Cum alijs.
King. Welcome deere Rosincrance and Guildensterne.
Moreouer, that we much did long to see you,
The neede we haue to vse you, did prouoke
Hamlet |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen: verses as the others. Today, methinks, is a most delicious day for a poet.
Nature seems anew to celebrate her awakening into life. The air is so
unusually clear, the clouds sail on so buoyantly, and from the green herbage a
fragrance is exhaled that fills me with delight, For many a year have I not
felt as at this moment."
We see already, by the foregoing effusion, that he is become a poet; to give
further proof of it, however, would in most cases be insipid, for it is a most
foolish notion to fancy a poet different from other men. Among the latter
there may be far more poetical natures than many an acknowledged poet, when
examined more closely, could boast of; the difference only is, that the poet
possesses a better mental memory, on which account he is able to retain the
Fairy Tales |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft: defeat at the Inspector's problem, there was one man in that gathering
who suspected a touch of bizarre familiarity in the monstrous
shape and writing, and who presently told with some diffidence
of the odd trifle he knew. This person was the late William Channing
Webb, Professor of Anthropology in Princeton University, and an
explorer of no slight note. Professor Webb had been engaged, forty-eight
years before, in a tour of Greenland and Iceland in search of
some Runic inscriptions which he failed to unearth; and whilst
high up on the West Greenland coast had encountered a singular
tribe or cult of degenerate Esquimaux whose religion, a curious
form of devil-worship, chilled him with its deliberate bloodthirstiness
Call of Cthulhu |
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 Somebody's Little Girl by Martha Young: if she, too, was talking her thinking aloud:
``Yes, there was a window like that in the world, for just outside
the nursery-window there grew a Pride of China Tree, and it filled
all the window with small, green, moving leaves--''
Then Bessie Bell just let the lady draw her up close, and she leaned
up against the lady.
She felt so happy now, for she knew she had found the Wisest Woman
in the world, for this lady knew the things that little girls only
could remember. If she had thought about it she would have told the
lady about the tiny apple-trees with the very, very small apples on
them, and other rows of apple-trees over those, and other rows on
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