| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft: bleak realm of ice and death is of the highest importance to our
knowledge of the earth’s past. That the antarctic continent was
once temperate and even tropical, with a teeming vegetable and
animal life of which the lichens, marine fauna, arachnida, and
penguins of the northern edge are the only survivals, is a matter
of common information; and we hoped to expand that information
in variety, accuracy, and detail. When a simple boring revealed
fossiliferous signs, we would enlarge the aperture by blasting,
in order to get specimens of suitable size and condition.
Our
borings, of varying depth according to the promise held out by
At the Mountains of Madness |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from An Unsocial Socialist by George Bernard Shaw: those only who had, in her opinion, a right to the same honor.
And she was far stricter on that point than the Lord Chamberlain,
who had, she held, betrayed his trust by practically turning
Leveller. She was well educated, refined in her manners and
habits, skilled in etiquette to an extent irritating to the
ignorant, and gifted with a delicate complexion, pearly teeth,
and a face that would have been Grecian but for a slight upward
tilt of the nose and traces of a square, heavy type in the jaw.
Her father was a retired admiral, with sufficient influence to
have had a sinecure made by a Conservative government expressly
for the maintenance of his son pending alliance with some
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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 Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: His widowed dam contrives to rob,
And thus with great originality
Effectuates his personality.
Thenceforth his terror-haunted flight
He follows through the starry night;
And with the early morning breeze,
Behold him on the azure seas.
The master of a trading dandy
Hires Robin for a go of brandy;
And all the happy hills of home
Vanish beyond the fields of foam.
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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 My Antonia by Willa Cather: 'Primus ego in patriam mecum ... deducam Musas'; `for I shall
be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse into my country.'
Cleric had explained to us that `patria' here meant, not a nation
or even a province, but the little rural neighbourhood on the Mincio
where the poet was born. This was not a boast, but a hope,
at once bold and devoutly humble, that he might bring the Muse
(but lately come to Italy from her cloudy Grecian mountains),
not to the capital, the palatia Romana, but to his own little
I country'; to his father's fields, `sloping down to the river
and to the old beech trees with broken tops.'
Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was dying at Brindisi,
My Antonia |
