| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: Cuddle to sleep to be out of her way;
And flowers and children close their eyes
Till up in the morning the sun shall arise.
XXXIII
The Swing
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
 A Child's Garden of Verses |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: knows what sort of life would result if we had attained to purity?
If I knew so wise a man as could teach me purity I would go to seek
him forthwith. "A command over our passions, and over the external
senses of the body, and good acts, are declared by the Ved to be
indispensable in the mind's approximation to God." Yet the spirit
can for the time pervade and control every member and function of
the body, and transmute what in form is the grossest sensuality
into purity and devotion. The generative energy, which, when we are
loose, dissipates and makes us unclean, when we are continent
invigorates and inspires us. Chastity is the flowering of man; and
what are called Genius, Heroism, Holiness, and the like, are but
 Walden |