| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson: Marked is the sluggardly foot and marked the niggardly hand,
The hours and the miles are counted, the tributes numbered and weighed,
And woe to him that comes short, and woe to him that delayed!"
So spoke on the beach the mother, and counselled the wiser thing.
For Rahero stirred in the country and secretly mined the king.
Nor were the signals wanting of how the leaven wrought,
In the cords of obedience loosed and the tributes grudgingly brought.
And when last to the temple of Oro the boat with the victim sped,
And the priest uncovered the basket and looked on the face of the dead,
Trembling fell upon all at sight of an ominous thing,
For there was the aito (1) dead, and he of the house of the king.
Ballads |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather: American drama: tall and thin, with high,
hitching shoulders and a small head glistening
with closely brushed yellow hair. He spoke
with an extreme Oxford accent, and when he was
talking well, his face sometimes wore the rapt
expression of a very emotional man listening
to music. Mainhall liked Alexander because
he was an engineer. He had preconceived
ideas about everything, and his idea about
Americans was that they should be engineers
or mechanics. He hated them when they
Alexander's Bridge |
