| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Rivers to the Sea by Sara Teasdale: Love brought no peace, nor darkness any rest.
I crept and touched the foam with fevered hands
And cried to Love, from whom the sea is sweet,
From whom the sea is bitterer than death.
¹ From " Helen of Troy and Other Poems."
RIVERS TO THE SEA
Ah, Aphrodite, if I sing no more
To thee, God's daughter, powerful as God,
It is that thou hast made my life too sweet
To hold the added sweetness of a song.
There is a quiet at the heart of love,
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Plutarch's Lives by A. H. Clough: speech so stopped the soldiers' mouths, and altered their minds, that all
the tribes decreed a triumph for Aemilius; which was performed after this
manner.
The people erected scaffolds in the Forum, in the circuses, as they call
their buildings for horse-races, and in all other parts of the city where
they could best behold the show. The spectators were clad in white
garments; all the temples were open, and full of garlands and perfumes;
the ways were cleared and kept open by numerous officers, who drove back
all who crowded into or ran across the main avenue. This triumph lasted
three days. On the first, which was scarcely long enough for the sight,
were to be seen the statues, pictures, and colossal images, which were
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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 Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey: Slowly the buzzard king sailed by and returned. Every time he swooped a little
nearer, and bent his long, scraggy neck.
Suddenly he swooped down, light and swift as a hawk; his wide wings fanned the
air; he poised under the tree, and then fastened sharp talons in the doomed
man's breast.
Chapter XXIX.
The fleeting human instinct of Wetzel had given way to the habit of years.
His merciless quest for many days had been to kill the frontier fiend. Now
that it had been accomplished, he turned his vengeance into its accustomed
channel, and once more became the ruthless Indian-slayer.
A fierce, tingling joy surged through him as he struck the Delaware's trail.
The Spirit of the Border |
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 Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia by Samuel Johnson: determined to keep his design always in view, and lay hold on any
expedient that time should offer.
CHAPTER VI - A DISSERTATION ON THE ART OF FLYING.
AMONG the artists that had been allured into the Happy Valley, to
labour for the accommodation and pleasure of its inhabitants, was a
man eminent for his knowledge of the mechanic powers, who had
contrived many engines both of use and recreation. By a wheel
which the stream turned he forced the water into a tower, whence it
was distributed to all the apartments of the palace. He erected a
pavilion in the garden, around which he kept the air always cool by
artificial showers. One of the groves, appropriated to the ladies,
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