| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Bucolics by Virgil: Hither had strayed, while from the frost I fend
My tender myrtles, the he-goat himself,
Lord of the flock; when Daphnis I espy!
Soon as he saw me, "Hither haste," he cried,
"O Meliboeus! goat and kids are safe;
And, if you have an idle hour to spare,
Rest here beneath the shade. Hither the steers
Will through the meadows, of their own free will,
Untended come to drink. Here Mincius hath
With tender rushes rimmed his verdant banks,
And from yon sacred oak with busy hum
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Margret Howth: A Story of To-day by Rebecca Harding Davis: answer for. Give me your hand, and feel how it pants like a
hungry fiend. It will have food, Margret."
She drew away the hand he grasped, and stood back in the shadow.
"What is it to me?"--in the same measured voice.
Holmes wiped the cold drops from his forehead, a sort of shudder
in his powerful frame. He stood a moment looking into the fire,
his head dropped on his arm.
"Let it be so," he said at last, quietly. "The worn old heart
can gnaw on itself a little longer. I have no mind to whimper
over pain."
Something that she saw on the dark sardonic face, as the red
Margret Howth: A Story of To-day |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Flame and Shadow by Sara Teasdale: When life is done with me,
Will lift the blue flame of the flower
And the white flame of the tree.
Oh burn me with your beauty, then,
Oh hurt me, tree and flower,
Lest in the end death try to take
Even this glistening hour.
O shaken flowers, O shimmering trees,
O sunlit white and blue,
Wound me, that I, through endless sleep,
May bear the scar of you.
|
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 Tao Teh King by Lao-tze: that the sage (ruler), wishing to be above men, puts himself by his
words below them, and, wishing to be before them, places his person
behind them.
2. In this way though he has his place above them, men do not feel his
weight, nor though he has his place before them, do they feel it an
injury to them.
3. Therefore all in the world delight to exalt him and do not weary of
him. Because he does not strive, no one finds it possible to strive
with him.
67. 1. All the world says that, while my Tao is great, it yet appears
to be inferior (to other systems of teaching). Now it is just its
|
