| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Animal Farm by George Orwell: on the farm. Later there would also be need for seeds and artificial
manures, besides various tools and, finally, the machinery for the
windmill. How these were to be procured, no one was able to imagine.
One Sunday morning, when the animals assembled to receive their orders,
Napoleon announced that he had decided upon a new policy. From now onwards
Animal Farm would engage in trade with the neighbouring farms: not, of
course, for any commercial purpose, but simply in order to obtain certain
materials which were urgently necessary. The needs of the windmill must
override everything else, he said. He was therefore making arrangements to
sell a stack of hay and part of the current year's wheat crop, and later
on, if more money were needed, it would have to be made up by the sale of
Animal Farm |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Anthem by Ayn Rand: Then our eyes became used to the darkness,
but we could not believe what we saw.
No men known to us could have built
this place, nor the men known to our
brothers who lived before us, and yet it
was built by men. It was a great tunnel.
Its walls were hard and smooth to the
touch; it felt like stone, but it was not stone.
On the ground there were long thin tracks
of iron, but it was not iron; it felt smooth
and cold as glass. We knelt, and we crawled
Anthem |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare: 'Even thus,' quoth she, 'he seized on my lips
And with her lips on his did act the seizure
And as she fetched breath, away he skips,
And would not take her meaning nor her pleasure.
Ah, that I had my lady at this bay,
To kiss and clip me till I run away!
XII.
Crabbed age and youth cannot live together
Youth is full of pleasance, age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare;
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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 Alexandria and her Schools by Charles Kingsley: enough; the work of a man who knew thoroughly what sort of article he
intended to make, and what were the most approved methods of making it.
Curious and cumbrous mythological lore comes out in every other line.
The smartness, the fine epithets, the recondite conceits, the bits of
effect, are beyond all praise; but as for one spark of life, of poetry,
of real belief, you will find none; not even in that famous Lavacrum
Palladis which Angelo Poliziano thought worth translating into Latin
elegiacs, about the same time that the learned Florentine, Antonio Maria
Salviano, found Berenice's Hair worthy to be paraphrased back from
Catullus' Latin into Greek, to give the world some faint notion of the
inestimable and incomparable original. They must have had much time on
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