| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: And my mishap the knight perchance would move,
To shed some tears upon his murdered love.
LXXXVI
"Alas! impossible are all these things,
Such wishes vain afflict my woful sprite,
Why yield I thus to plaints and sorrowings,
As if all hope and help were perished quite?
My heart dares much, it soars with Cupid's wings,
Why use I not for once these armors bright?
I may sustain awhile this shield aloft,
Though I be tender, feeble, weak and soft.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: and desires of the strange evil so vaguely threatening this planet.
Talks with several students of archaic lore in Boston, and letters
to many others elsewhere, gave him a growing amazement which passed
slowly through varied degrees of alarm to a state of really acute
spiritual fear. As the summer drew on he felt dimly that something
ought to be done about the lurking terrors of the upper Miskatonic
valley, and about the monstrous being known to the human world
as Wilbur Whateley.
VI.
The Dunwich horror itself came between
Lammas and the equinox in 1928, and Dr Armitage was among those
The Dunwich Horror |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Ball at Sceaux by Honore de Balzac: promise splendid results on paper, and are ruinous in effect. He was--
to quote the wittiest and most successful of our diplomates--one of
the faithful five hundred who shared the exile of the Court at Ghent,
and one of the fifty thousand who returned with it. During the short
banishment of royalty, Monsieur de Fontaine was so happy as to be
employed by Louis XVIII., and found more than one opportunity of
giving him proofs of great political honesty and sincere attachment.
One evening, when the King had nothing better to do, he recalled
Monsieur de Fontaine's witticism at the Tuileries. The old Vendeen did
not let such a happy chance slip; he told his history with so much
vivacity that a king, who never forgot anything, might remember it at
|
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 Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: to time with a swaggering grace, and looked round disdainfully on the
rest of the crew. A high-born damsel, with a falcon on her wrist, only
spoke with her mother or with a churchman of high rank, who was
evidently a relation. All these persons made a great deal of noise,
and talked among themselves as though there were no one else in the
boat; yet close beside them sat a man of great importance in the
district, a stout burgher of Bruges, wrapped about with a vast cloak.
His servant, armed to the teeth, had set down a couple of bags filled
with gold at his side. Next to the burgher came a man of learning, a
doctor of the University of Louvain, who was traveling with his clerk.
This little group of folk, who looked contemptuously at each other,
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