| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Reign of King Edward the Third by William Shakespeare: That they have made, fair prince, is wonderful.
Before us in the valley lies the king,
Vantaged with all that heaven and earth can yield;
His party stronger battled than our whole:
His son, the braving Duke of Normandy,
Hath trimmed the Mountain on our right hand up
In shining plate, that now the aspiring hill
Shews like a silver quarry or an orb,
Aloft the which the Banners, bannarets,
And new replenished pendants cuff the air
And beat the winds, that for their gaudiness
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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 Art of Writing by Robert Louis Stevenson: a way of life, like shoemaking, but not so useful, that he is
only debating one aspect of a question, and is still clearly
conscious of a dozen others more important in themselves and
more central to the matter in hand. But while those who
treat literature in this penny-wise and virtue-foolish spirit
are themselves truly in possession of a better light, it does
not follow that the treatment is decent or improving, whether
for themselves or others. To treat all subjects in the
highest, the most honourable, and the pluckiest spirit,
consistent with the fact, is the first duty of a writer. If
he be well paid, as I am glad to hear he is, this duty
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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: Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain,
Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.
How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,
What persecution, merciless and blind,
Drove o'er the sea--that desert desolate--
These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?
They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,
Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;
Taught in the school of patience to endure
The life of anguish and the death of fire.
All their lives long, with the unleavened bread
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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 Nada the Lily by H. Rider Haggard: he had said and the vision that my mother had seen were beginning to
come true. By the help of the Umtetwas he had taken the place of his
father Senzangacona; he had driven out the tribe of the Amaquabe; now
he made war on Zweete, chief of the Endwande, and he had sworn that he
would stamp the Endwande flat, so that nobody could find them any
more. Now I remembered how this Chaka promised that he would make me
great, and that I should grow fat in his shadow; and I thought to
myself that I would arise and go to him. Perhaps he would kill me;
well, what did it matter? Certainly I should be killed if I stayed
ehre. Yes, I would go. But now my heart pulled another way. There was
but one whom I loved in the world--it was my sister Baleka. My father
Nada the Lily |
