| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: the sake of tropes and expression, to serve a parable-maker one day.
It was on the whole a rare amusement, which, continued too long,
might have become a dissipation. Though I gave them no manure, and
did not hoe them all once, I hoed them unusualy well as far as I
went, and was paid for it in the end, "there being in truth," as
Evelyn says, "no compost or laetation whatsoever comparable to this
continual motion, repastination, and turning of the mould with the
spade." "The earth," he adds elsewhere, "especially if fresh, has a
certain magnetism in it, by which it attracts the salt, power, or
virtue (call it either) which gives it life, and is the logic of all
the labor and stir we keep about it, to sustain us; all dungings and
Walden |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Pool in the Desert by Sara Jeanette Duncan: service in the morning. 'Bless me!' said I, 'is it Sunday?' It
seemed she had got on very well indeed with the bishop, who knew the
married sister, at Tunbridge, of her very greatest friend. Cecily
herself did not know the married sister, but that didn't matter--it
was a link. The bishop was charming. 'Well, my love,' said I--I
was teaching myself to use these forms of address for fear she would
feel an unkind lack of them, but it was difficult--'I am glad that
somebody from my part of the world has impressed you favourably at
last. I wish we had more bishops.'
'Oh, but my bishop doesn't belong to your part of the world,'
responded my daughter sleepily. 'He is travelling for his health.'
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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 Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: . . . Our ancestors dedicated the inventions of their wisdom to
this deity, inscribing all their own writings with the name of
Hermes.--IAMBLICUS.
Still through Egypt's desert places
Flows the lordly Nile,
From its banks the great stone faces
Gaze with patient smile.
Still the pyramids imperious
Pierce the cloudless skies,
And the Sphinx stares with mysterious,
Solemn, stony eyes.
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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 Moby Dick by Herman Melville: to Leviathan, so, compared with Leviathan's tail, his trunk is but
the stalk of a lily. The most direful blow from the elephant's trunk
were as the playful tap of a fan, compared with the measureless crush
and crash of the sperm whale's ponderous flukes, which in repeated
instances have one after the other hurled entire boats with all their
oars and crews into the air, very much as an Indian juggler tosses
his balls.*
*Though all comparison in the way of general bulk between the whale
and the elephant is preposterous, inasmuch as in that particular the
elephant stands in much the same respect to the whale that a dog does
to the elephant; nevertheless, there are not wanting some points of
Moby Dick |
