| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Phantasmagoria and Other Poems by Lewis Carroll: With 'therefore' or 'because,'
I blindly reeled, a hundred ways,
About the syllogistic maze,
Unconscious where I was.
Quoth he "That's regular clap-trap:
Don't bluster any more.
Now DO be cool and take a nap!
Such a ridiculous old chap
Was never seen before!
"You're like a man I used to meet,
Who got one day so furious
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson: VI
Block City
What are you able to build with your blocks?
Castles and palaces, temples and docks.
Rain may keep raining, and others go roam,
But I can be happy and building at home.
Let the sofa be mountains, the carpet be sea,
There I'll establish a city for me:
A kirk and a mill and a palace beside,
And a harbour as well where my vessels may ride.
Great is the palace with pillar and wall,
A Child's Garden of Verses |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: XLIII - TO S. R. CROCKETT (On receiving a Dedication)
BLOWS the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!
Grey recumbent tombs of the dead in desert places,
Standing stones on the vacant wine-red moor,
Hills of sheep, and the howes of the silent vanished races,
And winds, austere and pure:
Be it granted me to behold you again in dying,
Hills of home! and to hear again the call;
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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 Under the Andes by Rex Stout: but at length I found a small crevice between two boulders in the
rear. Into this I squeezed my body with some difficulty.
The rock pressed tightly against me on both sides, and the
sharp corners bruised my body, but I wormed my way through for a
distance of fifteen or twenty feet. Then the crevice opened
abruptly, and I found myself on a broad ledge ending apparently in
space. I advanced cautiously to its edge, but intervening boulders
shut off the light, and I could see no ground below.
Throwing prudence to the winds, I let myself over the
outermost corner, hung for a moment by my hands, and dropped. My
feet touched ground almost instantly--the supposedly perilous fall
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