| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Essays & Lectures by Oscar Wilde: hand, in prose and not in verse, in a pamphlet and not in a lyric.
This exquisite spirit of artistic choice was not in Byron:
Wordsworth had it not. In the work of both these men there is much
that we have to reject, much that does not give us that sense of
calm and perfect repose which should be the effect of all fine,
imaginative work. But in Keats it seemed to have been incarnate,
and in his lovely ODE ON A GRECIAN URN it found its most secure and
faultless expression; in the pageant of the EARTHLY PARADISE and
the knights and ladies of Burne-Jones it is the one dominant note.
It is to no avail that the Muse of Poetry be called, even by such a
clarion note as Whitman's, to migrate from Greece and Ionia and to
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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 Human Drift by Jack London: six o'clock that evening he would arrive at my hotel with ten
leopard skins for my inspection. Further, I learned that the
skins were the property of one Captain Ernesto Becucci. Also, I
learned that the boy's name was Eliceo.
The boy was prompt. At six o'clock he was at my room. In his
hand was a small roll addressed to me. On opening it I found it
to be manuscript piano music, the Hora Tranquila Valse, or
"Tranquil Hour Waltz," by Ernesto Becucci. I came for leopard
skins, thought I, and the owner sends me sheet music instead. But
the boy assured me that he would have the skins at the hotel at
nine next morning, and I entrusted to him the following letter of
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