| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy: concealed dead men of Rome. It was impossible to dig more
than a foot or two deep about the town fields and gardens
without coming upon some tall soldier or other of the
Empire, who had lain there in his silent unobtrusive rest
for a space of fifteen hundred years. He was mostly found
lying on his side, in an oval scoop in the chalk, like a
chicken in its shell; his knees drawn up to his chest;
sometimes with the remains of his spear against his arm, a
fibula or brooch of bronze on his breast or forehead, an urn
at his knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth;
and mystified conjecture pouring down upon him from the eyes
The Mayor of Casterbridge |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Chronicles of the Canongate by Walter Scott: do something. They had this consolation, that everything they
parted with from their superfluity would do some good. They
would sleep the better themselves when they had been the means of
giving sleep to others. It was ungrateful and unkind that those
who had sacrificed their youth to our amusement should not
receive the reward due to them, but should be reduced to hard
fare in their old age. We cannot think of poor Falstaff going to
bed without his cup of sack, or Macbeth fed on bones as
marrowless as those of Banquo. (Loud cheers and laughter.) As he
believed that they were all as fond of the dramatic art as he was
in his younger days, he would propose that they should drink "The
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Perfect Wagnerite: A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring by George Bernard Shaw: Will is the universal tormentor of man, the author of that great
evil, Life; whilst reason is the divine gift that is finally to
overcome this life-creating will and lead, through its
aboegation, to cessation and peace, annihilation and Nirvana.
This is the doctrine of Pessimism. Now Wagner was, when he wrote
The Ring, a most sanguine revolutionary Meliorist, contemptuous
of the reasoning faculty, which he typified in the shifty,
unreal, delusive Loki, and full of faith in the life-giving Will,
which he typified in the glorious Siegfried. Not until he read
Schopenhaur did he become bent on proving that he had always been
a Pessimist at heart, and that Loki was the most sensible and
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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 Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: the Lady Anne had withdrawn to one side. Then he knew that it was
to give him the opportunity to proffer his request.
A little space of silence followed, the while he strove to key
his courage to the saying of that which lay at his mind. "Lady,"
said he at last, and then again--"Lady, I--have a favor for to
ask thee."
"What is it thou wouldst have, Sir Myles?" she murmured, in
reply.
"Lady," said he, "ever sin I first saw thee I have thought that
if I might choose of all the world, thou only wouldst I choose
for--for my true lady, to serve as a right knight should." Here
Men of Iron |
