| 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: All around the house is the jet-black night;
It stares through the window-pane;
It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light,
And it moves with the moving flame.
Now my little heart goes a beating like a drum,
With the breath of the Bogies in my hair;
And all around the candle and the crooked shadows come,
And go marching along up the stair.
The shadow of the balusters, the shadow of the lamp,
The shadow of the child that goes to bed--
All the wicked shadows coming tramp, tramp, tramp,
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 The Mirror of the Sea by Joseph Conrad: delicious. But, in truth, this was one of the greatest surprises
ever sprung by the clearing up mood of the West Wind upon one of
the most accomplished of his courtiers.
XXVIII.
The winds of North and South are, as I have said, but small princes
amongst the powers of the sea. They have no territory of their
own; they are not reigning winds anywhere. Yet it is from their
houses that the reigning dynasties which have shared between them
the waters of the earth are sprung. All the weather of the world
is based upon the contest of the Polar and Equatorial strains of
that tyrannous race. The West Wind is the greatest king. The East
The Mirror of the Sea |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley: bottom; and perhaps in them, ages hence, some one will find the
bones of those sheep, and of poor Mr. Pig too, fossil -
And the butter firkins too. What fun to find a fossil butter
firkin!
But now lift up your eyes to the jagged mountain crests, and their
dark sides all laced with silver streams. Out of every crack and
cranny there aloft, the rain is bringing down dirt, and stones
too, which have been split off by the winter's frosts, deepening
every little hollow, and sharpening every peak, and making the
hills more jagged and steep year by year.
When the ice went away, the hills were all scraped smooth 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 The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: Bring not suspicion's candle to the glass
That mirrors a friend's face to memory.
Of what you see, see all, -- but see no more;
For what I show you here will not be there.
The devil has had his way with paint before,
And he's an artist, -- and you needn't stare.
There was a painter and he painted well:
He'd paint you Daniel in the lions' den,
Beelzebub, Elaine, or William Tell.
I'm coming back to Nimmo's eyes again.
The painter put the devil in those eyes,
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