| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde: Upon the mirrored floor, and argosies
Of fishes flecked with tawny scales will thread
The drifting cordage of the shattered wreck,
And honey-coloured amber beads our twining limbs will deck.'
But when that baffled Lord of War the Sun
With gaudy pennon flying passed away
Into his brazen House, and one by one
The little yellow stars began to stray
Across the field of heaven, ah! then indeed
She feared his lips upon her lips would never care to feed,
And cried, 'Awake, already the pale moon
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Phaedo by Plato: mortal, and unintellectual, and multiform, and dissoluble, and changeable.
Can this, my dear Cebes, be denied?
It cannot.
But if it be true, then is not the body liable to speedy dissolution? and
is not the soul almost or altogether indissoluble?
Certainly.
And do you further observe, that after a man is dead, the body, or visible
part of him, which is lying in the visible world, and is called a corpse,
and would naturally be dissolved and decomposed and dissipated, is not
dissolved or decomposed at once, but may remain for a for some time, nay
even for a long time, if the constitution be sound at the time of death,
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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 Second Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: her mouth just in time to stop a scream. Her husband was only
bewildered and angry, and sat picking dust and things out of
his torn beard.
"I knew--I knew he would come," Messua sobbed at last. "Now do
I KNOW that he is my son!" and she hugged Mowgli to her heart.
Up to that time Mowgli had been perfectly steady, but now he
began to tremble all over, and that surprised him immensely.
"Why are these thongs? Why have they tied thee?" he asked,
after a pause.
"To be put to the death for making a son of thee--what else?"
said the man sullenly. "Look! I bleed."
The Second Jungle Book |
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 A Pair of Blue Eyes by Thomas Hardy: For, Elfride, a secret of no importance at all may be made the
basis of some fatal misunderstanding only because it is
discovered, and not confessed. They say there never was a couple
of whom one had not some secret the other never knew or was
intended to know. This may or may not be true; but if it be true,
some have been happy in spite rather than in consequence of it.
If a man were to see another man looking significantly at his
wife, and she were blushing crimson and appearing startled, do you
think he would be so well satisfied with, for instance, her
truthful explanation that once, to her great annoyance, she
accidentally fainted into his arms, as if she had said it
A Pair of Blue Eyes |
