| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: But what she meets and what she fears
Are less than are the downward years,
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs
Of age, were she to lose him.
Between a blurred sagacity
That once had power to sound him,
And Love, that will not let him be
The Judas that she found him,
Her pride assuages her almost,
As if it were alone the cost. --
He sees that he will not be lost,
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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 Jungle Tales of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs: and as his mother turned, affrighted at his cry,
she saw him being dragged quickly toward a great white
giant who stood just beneath the shade of a near-by tree,
scarcely a dozen long paces from her.
With a savage cry of terror and rage, the woman leaped fearlessly
toward the ape-man. In her mien Tarzan saw determination
and courage which would shrink not even from death itself.
She was very hideous and frightful even when her face
was in repose; but convulsed by passion, her expression
became terrifyingly fiendish. Even the ape-man drew back,
but more in revulsion than fear--fear he knew not.
The Jungle Tales of Tarzan |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton: but down in the shade, and stay but a little while; and I'll warrant you,
I'll bring him to you.
Venator. I'll sit down; and hope well, because you seem to be so
confident.
Piscator. Look you, Sir, there is a trial of my skill; there he is: that very
Chub, that I showed you, with the white spot on his tail. And I'll be as
certain to make him a good dish of meat as I was to catch him: I'll now
lead you to an honest ale-house, where we shall find a cleanly room,
lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads stuck about the wall.
There my hostess, which I may tell you is both cleanly, and handsome,
and civil, hath dressed many a one for me; and shall now dress it after
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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 Glaucus/The Wonders of the Shore by Charles Kingsley: Madrepore, Caryophyllia Smithii (Plate V. fig. 2); one of our south
coast rarities: and see, on the lip of the last one, which we have
carefully scooped off with the chisel, two little pink towers of
stone, delicately striated; drop them into this small bottle of
sea-water, and from the top of each tower issues every half-second
- what shall we call it? - a hand or a net of finest hairs,
clutching at something invisible to our grosser sense. That is the
Pyrgoma, parasitic only (as far as we know) on the lip of this same
rare Madrepore; a little "cirrhipod," the cousin of those tiny
barnacles which roughen every rock (a larger sort whereof I showed
you on the Turritella), and of those larger ones also who burrow in
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