| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from King Henry VI by William Shakespeare: And live we how we can, yet die we must.
[Enter OXFORD and SOMERSET.]
SOMERSET.
Ah, Warwick, Warwick! wert thou as we are,
We might recover all our loss again.
The queen from France hath brought a puissant power;
Even now we heard the news. Ah, couldst thou fly!
WARWICK.
Why, then I would not fly.--Ah, Montague!
If thou be there, sweet brother, take my hand
And with thy lips keep in my soul awhile.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedrus by Plato: glad, until the revolution of the worlds brings her round again to the same
place. In the revolution she beholds justice, and temperance, and
knowledge absolute, not in the form of generation or of relation, which men
call existence, but knowledge absolute in existence absolute; and beholding
the other true existences in like manner, and feasting upon them, she
passes down into the interior of the heavens and returns home; and there
the charioteer putting up his horses at the stall, gives them ambrosia to
eat and nectar to drink.
Such is the life of the gods; but of other souls, that which follows God
best and is likest to him lifts the head of the charioteer into the outer
world, and is carried round in the revolution, troubled indeed by the
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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 Just Folks by Edgar A. Guest: All the petty thoughts and narrow seem to vanish for awhile
And the true reward he's seeking is the glory of a smile.
Then for others he is toiling and somehow it seems to me
That at Christmas he is almost what God wanted him to be.
If I had to paint a picture of a man I think I'd wait
Till he'd fought his selfish battles and had put aside his hate.
I'd not catch him at his labors when his thoughts are all of pelf,
On the long days and the dreary when he's striving for himself.
I'd not take him when he's sneering, when he's scornful or depressed,
But I'd look for him at Christmas when he's shining at his best.
Man is ever in a struggle and he's oft misunderstood;
Just Folks |
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 Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw: rank with it. To win, you must write the best book of your generation
on Shakespear. It is felt on all sides that to do this a certain
fastidious refinement, a delicacy of taste, a correctness of manner
and tone, and high academic distinction in addition to the
indispensable scholarship and literary reputation, are needed; and men
who pretend to these qualifications are constantly looked to with a
gentle expectation that presently they will achieve the great feat.
Now if there is a man on earth who is the utter contrary of everything
that this description implies; whose very existence is an insult to
the ideal it realizes; whose eye disparages, whose resonant voice
denounces, whose cold shoulder jostles every decency, every delicacy,
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