| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Kenilworth by Walter Scott: sung of a dozen times a week on my ale-bench below. Sir Roger
Robsart of Devon--oh, ay, 'tis him of whom minstrels sing to this
hour,--
'He was the flower of Stoke's red field,
When Martin Swart on ground lay slain;
In raging rout he never reel'd,
But like a rock did firm remain.'
[This verse, or something similar, occurs in a long ballad, or
poem, on Flodden Field, reprinted by the late Henry Weber.]
Ay, and then there was Martin Swart I have heard my grandfather
talk of, and of the jolly Almains whom he commanded, with their
Kenilworth |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Warlord of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs: labyrinth of glass, through the dark and devious ways beyond that
led beneath the Valley Dor and Golden Cliffs to emerge at last upon
the flank of the Otz Mountains just above the Valley of Lost Souls--
that pitiful purgatory peopled by the poor unfortunates who dare
not continue their abandoned pilgrimage to Dor, or return to the
various lands of the outer world from whence they came.
Here the trail of Dejah Thoris' abductors led along the mountains' base,
across steep and rugged ravines, by the side of appalling precipices,
and sometimes out into the valley, where we found fighting aplenty
with the members of the various tribes that make up the population
The Warlord of Mars |
