| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken: And returned to see it again. And it was so.'
Weave, weave, weave, you streaks of rain!
I am dissolved and woven again . . .
Thousands of faces rise and vanish before me.
Thousands of voices weave in the rain.
'I am the one who rode beside you, blinking
At a dazzle of golden lights.
Tempests of music swept me: I was thinking
Of the gorgeous promise of certain nights:
Of the woman who suddenly smiled at me this day,
Smiled in a certain delicious sidelong way,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: For love of unforgotten times,
And you may chance to hear once more
The little feet along the floor.
III
To Auntie
"Chief of our aunts"--not only I,
But all your dozen of nurselings cry--
"What did the other children do?
And what were childhood, wanting you?"
IV
To Minnie
A Child's Garden of Verses |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lesser Hippias by Plato: oration itself is professedly a mimetic work, like the speeches in the
Phaedrus, and cannot therefore be tested by a comparison of the other
writings of Plato. The funeral oration of Pericles is expressly mentioned
in the Phaedrus, and this may have suggested the subject, in the same
manner that the Cleitophon appears to be suggested by the slight mention of
Cleitophon and his attachment to Thrasymachus in the Republic; and the
Theages by the mention of Theages in the Apology and Republic; or as the
Second Alcibiades seems to be founded upon the text of Xenophon, Mem. A
similar taste for parody appears not only in the Phaedrus, but in the
Protagoras, in the Symposium, and to a certain extent in the Parmenides.
To these two doubtful writings of Plato I have added the First Alcibiades,
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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 Tales and Fantasies by Robert Louis Stevenson: wise in his treatment of John; whether it was possible that
John was innocent; whether, if he turned John out a second
time, as his outraged authority suggested, it was possible to
avoid a scandal; and whether, if he went to that extremity,
it was possible that Alexander might rebel.
'Hum!' said Mr. Nicholson, and put his hand, limp and dead,
into John's.
And then, in an embarrassed silence, all took their places;
and even the paper - from which it was the old gentleman's
habit to suck mortification daily, as he marked the decline
of our institutions - even the paper lay furled by his side.
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