| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: With many a nod and many a grin,
He sees him cast his engine in.
'What have you caught?' the peasant cries.
'Nothing as yet,' the Fool replies.
MORAL TALES
Poem: I - ROBIN AND BEN: OR, THE PIRATE AND THE APOTHECARY
Come, lend me an attentive ear
A startling moral tale to hear,
Of Pirate Rob and Chemist Ben,
And different destinies of men.
Deep in the greenest of the vales
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Rig Veda: that
brings remembrance day by day;
Food to your praisers, to your bard in deeds of might give
winning
wisdom, power uninjured, unsurpassed.
8 When the bright-chested Maruts, lavish of their gifts, bind
at the
time bliss their horses to the cars,
Then, as the milch-cow feeds her calf within the stalls, they
pour
forth food for all oblation-bringing men.
The Rig Veda |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lay Morals by Robert Louis Stevenson: in-hand through the different phrases of your letter, and
candidly examine each from the point of view of its truth,
its appositeness, and its charity.
Damien was COARSE.
It is very possible. You make us sorry for the lepers, who
had only a coarse old peasant for their friend and father.
But you, who were so refined, why were you not there, to
cheer them with the lights of culture? Or may I remind you
that we have some reason to doubt if John the Baptist were
genteel; and in the case of Peter, on whose career you
doubtless dwell approvingly in the pulpit, no doubt at all he
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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 Beast in the Jungle by Henry James: him was a figure he had noticed, on reaching his own goal, absorbed
by a grave a short distance away, a grave apparently fresh, so that
the emotion of the visitor would probably match it for frankness.
This fact alone forbade further attention, though during the time
he stayed he remained vaguely conscious of his neighbour, a middle-
aged man apparently, in mourning, whose bowed back, among the
clustered monuments and mortuary yews, was constantly presented.
Marcher's theory that these were elements in contact with which he
himself revived, had suffered, on this occasion, it may be granted,
a marked, an excessive check. The autumn day was dire for him as
none had recently been, and he rested with a heaviness he had not
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