| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Phoenix and the Turtle by William Shakespeare: Keep the obsequy so strict.
Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-defying swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.
And thou, treble-dated crow,
That thy sable gender mak'st
With the breath thou giv'st and tak'st,
'Mongst our mourners shalt thou go.
Here the anthem doth commence:
Love and constancy is dead;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift: both sexes in every country being now ready to starve for want of
work and service: And these to be disposed of by their parents if
alive, or otherwise by their nearest relations. But with due
deference to so excellent a friend, and so deserving a patriot, I
cannot be altogether in his sentiments; for as to the males, my
American acquaintance assured me from frequent experience, that
their flesh was generally tough and lean, like that of our
school-boys, by continual exercise, and their taste disagreeable,
and to fatten them would not answer the charge. Then as to the
females, it would, I think, with humble submission, be a loss to
the publick, because they soon would become breeders themselves:
A Modest Proposal |
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare: Iul. Villaine and he, be many miles assunder:
God pardon, I doe with all my heart:
And yet no man like he, doth grieue my heart
Lad. That is because the Traitor liues
Iul. I Madam from the reach of these my hands:
Would none but I might venge my Cozins death
Lad. We will haue vengeance for it, feare thou not.
Then weepe no more, Ile send to one in Mantua,
Where that same banisht Run-agate doth liue,
Shall giue him such an vnaccustom'd dram,
That he shall soone keepe Tybalt company:
Romeo and Juliet |
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 Pupil by Henry James: scientifically in old books. This was sure to be a great day,
always spent on the quays, in a rummage of the dusty boxes that
garnish the parapets. Such occasions helped them to live, for
their books ran low very soon after the beginning of their
acquaintance. Pemberton had a good many in England, but he was
obliged to write to a friend and ask him kindly to get some fellow
to give him something for them.
If they had to relinquish that summer the advantage of the bracing
climate the young man couldn't but suspect this failure of the cup
when at their very lips to have been the effect of a rude jostle of
his own. This had represented his first blow-out, as he called it,
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