| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: God help us all when women think they see;
God save us when they do. I'm fair; but though
I know him only as he looks to me,
I know him, -- and I tell Francesca so.
And what of Nimmo? Little would you ask
Of him, could you but see him as I can,
At his bewildered and unfruitful task
Of being what he was born to be -- a man.
Better forget that I said anything
Of what your tortured memory may disclose;
I know him, and your worst remembering
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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 Enchanted Island of Yew by L. Frank Baum: have a sword."
She plucked a twig from a near-by tree and cast it upon the ground at
her feet. Again she waved her wand--and the twig turned to a gleaming
sword, richly engraved, that seemed to the silent watchers to tremble
slightly in its sheath, as if its heart of steel throbbed with hopes
of battles to come.
"And now I must have shield and armor, said the fairy, gaily. "This
will make a shield,"--and she stripped a sheet of loose bark from a
tree-trunk,--"but for armor I must have something better. Will you
give me your cloak?"
This appeal was made to Seseley, and the baron's daughter drew her
The Enchanted Island of Yew |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin by Robert Louis Stevenson: distress of mind and reduced in fortune by the misconduct of her
sons; her destitution and solitude made it a recurring duty to
receive her, her violence continually enforced fresh separations.
In her passion of a disappointed mother, she was a fit object of
pity; but her grandson, who heard her load his own mother with
cruel insults and reproaches, conceived for her an indignant and
impatient hatred, for which he blamed himself in later life. It is
strange from this point of view to see his childish letters to Mrs.
Jackson; and to think that a man, distinguished above all by
stubborn truthfulness, should have been brought up to such
dissimulation. But this is of course unavoidable in life; it did
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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 The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen: deep folds of dream, was conscious that the path from his
father's house had led him into an undiscovered country, and he
was wondering at the strangeness of it all, when suddenly, in
place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an infinite silence
seemed to fall on all things, and the wood was hushed, and for a
moment in time he stood face to face there with a presence, that
was neither man nor beast, neither the living nor the dead, but
all things mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all
form. And in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was
dissolved, and a voice seemed to cry "Let us go hence," and
then the darkness of darkness beyond the stars, the darkness of
The Great God Pan |
