| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Moral Emblems by Robert Louis Stevenson: The fruits of my creative noddle,
All more or less upon a model,
Neat and commodious, cheap and dry,
A perfect pleasure to the eye!
I found this quite a country quarter;
I leave it solid lath and mortar.
In all, I was the single actor -
And am this city's benefactor!
Since then, alas! both thing and name,
Shoddy across the ocean came -
Shoddy that can the eye bewilder
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Of The Nature of Things by Lucretius: Good sooth- yet fire is not ingraft in wood,
But many are the seeds of heat, and when
Rubbing together they together flow,
They start the conflagrations in the forests.
Whereas if flame, already fashioned, lay
Stored up within the forests, then the fires
Could not for any time be kept unseen,
But would be laying all the wildwood waste
And burning all the boscage. Now dost see
(Even as we said a little space above)
How mightily it matters with what others,
Of The Nature of Things |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Westward Ho! by Charles Kingsley: dimmer behind her, a mighty cheer broke from all on board; and for
once the cry from every mouth was Eastward-ho!
Scrap by scrap, as weakness and confusion of intellect permitted
her, Lucy Passmore told her story. It was a simple one after all,
and Amyas might almost have guessed it for himself. Rose had not
yielded to the Spaniard without a struggle. He had visited her two
or three times at Lucy's house (how he found out Lucy's existence
she herself could never tell, unless from the Jesuits) before she
agreed to go with him. He had gained Lucy to his side by huge
promises of Indian gold; and, in fine, they had gone to Lundy,
where the lovers were married by a priest, who was none other, Lucy
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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 Out of Time's Abyss by Edgar Rice Burroughs: for the coming day, for Bradley was a man who, while taking every
precaution against possible danger, permitted no gloomy
forebodings to weigh down his spirit. When danger threatened, he
was prepared; but he was not forever courting disaster, and so it
was that when about one o'clock in the morning of the fifteenth,
he heard the dismal flapping of giant wings overhead, he was
neither surprised nor frightened but idly prepared for an attack
he had known might reasonably be expected.
The sound seemed to come from the south, and presently, low above
the trees in that direction, the man made out a dim, shadowy form
circling slowly about. Bradley was a brave man, yet so keen was
Out of Time's Abyss |
