| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Tastes sweetest, when, on his smooth shepherd-staff
Of olive leaning, Damon thus began.
DAMON
"Rise, Lucifer, and, heralding the light,
Bring in the genial day, while I make moan
Fooled by vain passion for a faithless bride,
For Nysa, and with this my dying breath
Call on the gods, though little it bestead-
The gods who heard her vows and heeded not.
"Begin, my flute, with me Maenalian lays.
Ever hath Maenalus his murmuring groves
|
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 An Inland Voyage by Robert Louis Stevenson: ordered some brandy and water. The great billows had gone over our
head. The Royal Nautical Sportsmen were as nice young fellows as a
man would wish to see, but they were a trifle too young and a
thought too nautical for us. We began to see that we were old and
cynical; we liked ease and the agreeable rambling of the human mind
about this and the other subject; we did not want to disgrace our
native land by messing an eight, or toiling pitifully in the wake
of the champion canoeist. In short, we had recourse to flight. It
seemed ungrateful, but we tried to make that good on a card loaded
with sincere compliments. And indeed it was no time for scruples;
we seemed to feel the hot breath of the champion on our necks.
|