| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Prince Otto by Robert Louis Stevenson: patience. Your wife is greatly better, vastly better; and though
she is in bad hands, displays a very different aptitude. She is a
woman of affairs; you are - dear boy, you are yourself. I bid you
back to your amusements; like a smiling dominie, I give you holidays
for life. Yes,' he continued, 'there is a day appointed for all
when they shall turn again upon their own philosophy. I had grown
to disbelieve impartially in all; and if in the atlas of the
sciences there were two charts I disbelieved in more than all the
rest, they were politics and morals. I had a sneaking kindness for
your vices; as they were negative, they flattered my philosophy; and
I called them almost virtues. Well, Otto, I was wrong; I have
|
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 De Profundis by Oscar Wilde: affection of many others besides. I believe I am to have enough to
live on for about eighteen months at any rate, so that if I may not
write beautiful books, I may at least read beautiful books; and
what joy can be greater? After that, I hope to be able to recreate
my creative faculty.
But were things different: had I not a friend left in the world;
were there not a single house open to me in pity; had I to accept
the wallet and ragged cloak of sheer penury: as long as I am free
from all resentment, hardness and scorn, I would be able to face
the life with much more calm and confidence than I would were my
body in purple and fine linen, and the soul within me sick with
|
