| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery: with Mrs. Thomas. When I went up river we were so far
from a school that I couldn't walk it in winter and there
was a vacation in summer, so I could only go in the spring
and fall. But of course I went while I was at the asylum.
I can read pretty well and I know ever so many pieces of
poetry off by heart--`The Battle of Hohenlinden' and
`Edinburgh after Flodden,' and `Bingen of the Rhine,' and
lost of the `Lady of the Lake' and most of `The Seasons' by
James Thompson. Don't you just love poetry that gives
you a crinkly feeling up and down your back? There is a
piece in the Fifth Reader--`The Downfall of Poland'--that
Anne of Green Gables |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Twenty Years After by Alexandre Dumas: Vallon, whom I like much; let him accompany you."
"The devil!" said D'Artagnan to himself. "He knows that we
overheard his conversation yesterday and he wants to get us
away from Paris."
"Do you hesitate?" asked Mazarin.
"No, my lord, and I will set out at once. There is one thing
only which I must request."
"What is it? Speak."
"That your eminence will go at once to the queen."
"What for?"
"Merely to say these words: `I am going to send Monsieur
Twenty Years After |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: workmanship which is itself entirely satisfying, and is (as the
Greeks would say) an end in itself.
And so in poetry too, the real poetical quality, the joy of poetry,
comes never from the subject but from an inventive handling of
rhythmical language, from what Keats called the 'sensuous life of
verse.' The element of song in the singing accompanied by the
profound joy of motion, is so sweet that, while the incomplete
lives of ordinary men bring no healing power with them, the thorn-
crown of the poet will blossom into roses for our pleasure; for our
delight his despair will gild its own thorns, and his pain, like
Adonis, be beautiful in its agony; and when the poet's heart breaks
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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 Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling: - she cried so. Can you guess, my dear, what that poor crazy thing
had done? It was midnight before I pieced it together. She had
given the spoons to Jerry Gamm, the Witchmaster on the Green,
so that he might put a charm on me! Me!'
'Put a charm on you? Why?'
'That's what I asked; and then I saw how mad poor Cissie was!
You know this stupid little cough of mine? It will disappear as
soon as I go to London. She was troubled about that, and about
my being so thin, and she told me Jerry had promised her, if she
would bring him three silver spoons, that he'd charm my cough
away and make me plump - "flesh up," she said. I couldn't help
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