| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: endure to be kept to a diet, or fixt to a particular place.
Nay, the very colours of caterpillars are, as one has observed, very
elegant and beautiful I shall, for a taste of the rest, describe one of
them; which I will, some time the next month, shew you feeding on a
willow-tree; and you shall find him punctually to answer this very
description: his lips and mouth somewhat yellow; his eyes black as jet;
his forehead purple; his feet and hinder parts green; his tail two-forked
and black; the whole body stained with a kind of red spots, which run
along the neck and shoulder-blade, not unlike the form of St. Andrew's
cross, or the letter X, made thus crosswise, and a white line drawn
down his back to his tail; all which add much beauty to his whole body.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Captain Stormfield by Mark Twain: It is like a learned Hindoo showing off how much he knows by saying
Longfellow lives in the United States - as if he lived all over the
United States, and as if the country was so small you couldn't
throw a brick there without hitting him. Between you and me, it
does gravel me, the cool way people from those monster worlds
outside our system snub our little world, and even our system. Of
course we think a good deal of Jupiter, because our world is only a
potato to it, for size; but then there are worlds in other systems
that Jupiter isn't even a mustard-seed to - like the planet Goobra,
for instance, which you couldn't squeeze inside the orbit of
Halley's comet without straining the rivets. Tourists from Goobra
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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 $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories by Mark Twain: down again. Then he went away. NOTHING interests him.
But I was interested. There were ashes, gray and soft and delicate
and pretty--I knew what they were at once. And the embers;
I knew the embers, too. I found my apples, and raked them out,
and was glad; for I am very young and my appetite is active.
But I was disappointed; they were all burst open and spoiled.
Spoiled apparently; but it was not so; they were better than raw ones.
Fire is beautiful; some day it will be useful, I think.
FRIDAY.--I saw him again, for a moment, last Monday at nightfall,
but only for a moment. I was hoping he would praise me for trying
to improve the estate, for I had meant well and had worked hard.
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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 Animal Farm by George Orwell: and this was sung every Sunday morning after the hoisting of the flag.
But somehow neither the words nor the tune ever seemed to the animals to
come up to 'Beasts of England'.
Chapter VIII
A few days later, when the terror caused by the executions had died down,
some of the animals remembered--or thought they remembered--that the Sixth
Commandment decreed "No animal shall kill any other animal." And though no
one cared to mention it in the hearing of the pigs or the dogs, it was
felt that the killings which had taken place did not square with this.
Clover asked Benjamin to read her the Sixth Commandment, and when
Benjamin, as usual, said that he refused to meddle in such matters, she
Animal Farm |
