| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Helen of Troy And Other Poems by Sara Teasdale: I am a woman. I shall never come
This way but once.
(The Knight and the Lady appear on the top of the tower.)
K.
Kiss me at last, my love.
L.
Oh, my sweet lord, I am too tired to kiss.
Look how the earth is like an emerald,
With rivers veined and flawed with fallow fields.
K. (Lifting her veil)
Then I kiss you, a thousand thousand kisses
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Hamlet by William Shakespeare: Qu. How fares my Lord?
Pol. Giue o're the Play
King. Giue me some Light. Away
All. Lights, Lights, Lights.
Exeunt.
Manet Hamlet & Horatio.
Ham. Why let the strucken Deere go weepe,
The Hart vngalled play:
For some must watch, while some must sleepe;
So runnes the world away.
Would not this Sir, and a Forrest of Feathers, if the rest of
Hamlet |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from My Antonia by Willa Cather: for Antonia's services--good wages in those days--and to keep
her in shoes. There had been hot dispute about the shoes,
Mrs. Shimerda finally saying persuasively that she would send
Mrs. Harling three fat geese every year to `make even.'
Ambrosch was to bring his sister to town next Saturday.
`She'll be awkward and rough at first, like enough,' grandmother said
anxiously, `but unless she's been spoiled by the hard life she's led,
she has it in her to be a real helpful girl.'
Mrs. Harling laughed her quick, decided laugh. `Oh, I'm
not worrying, Mrs. Burden! I can bring something out of that girl.
She's barely seventeen, not too old to learn new ways.
My Antonia |
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: there, and some men say by the Earl himself. Sin that day it hath
been tight shut."
Myles stared at the tower for a while in silence. "It is a
strange-seeming place from without," said he, at last, "and
mayhap it may be even more strange inside. Hast ever been within,
Francis?"
"Nay," said Gascoyne; "said I not it hath been fast locked since
Earl Robert's day?"
"By'r Lady," said Myles, "an I had lived here in this place so
long as thou, I wot I would have been within it ere this."
"Beshrew me," said Gascoyne, "but I have never thought of such a
Men of Iron |
