Today's Stichomancy for Robert Frost

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Apology by Xenophon:

he added: "By a lifelong persistence in doing nothing wrong, and that I take to be the finest practice for his defence which a man could devise." Presently reverting to the topic, Hermogenes demanded: "Do you not see, SOcrates, how often Athenian juries[8] are constrained by arguments to put quite innocent people to death, and not less often to acquit the guilty, either through some touch of pity excited by the pleadings, or that the defendant had skill to turn some charming phrase?" Thus appealed to, Socrates replied: "Nay, solemnly I tell you, twice already I have essayed to consider my defence, and twice the divinity[9] hinders me"; and to the remark of Hermogenes, "That is strange!" he answered again: "Strange, do you call it, that to God it

The Apology

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche:

blessing it rather than in love with it.

97. What? A great man? I always see merely the play-actor of his own ideal.

98. When one trains one's conscience, it kisses one while it bites.

99. THE DISAPPOINTED ONE SPEAKS--"I listened for the echo and I heard only praise".

100. We all feign to ourselves that we are simpler than we are, we thus relax ourselves away from our fellows.

101. A discerning one might easily regard himself at present as the animalization of God.

Beyond Good and Evil

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde:

PARKER. Mrs. Erlynne!

[LORD WINDERMERE starts. MRS. ERLYNNE enters, very beautifully dressed and very dignified. LADY WINDERMERE clutches at her fan, then lets it drop on the door. She bows coldly to MRS. ERLYNNE, who bows to her sweetly in turn, and sails into the room.]

LORD DARLINGTON. You have dropped your fan, Lady Windermere. [Picks it up and hands it to her.]

MRS. ERLYNNE. [C.] How do you do, again, Lord Windermere? How charming your sweet wife looks! Quite a picture!

LORD WINDERMERE. [In a low voice.] It was terribly rash of you to come!

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 Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary) by Dante Alighieri:

A space so ample, yet in brightness thou Will own it equaling the rest. But now, As under snow the ground, if the warm ray Smites it, remains dismantled of the hue And cold, that cover'd it before, so thee, Dismantled in thy mind, I will inform With light so lively, that the tremulous beam Shall quiver where it falls. Within the heaven, Where peace divine inhabits, circles round A body, in whose virtue dies the being Of all that it contains. The following heaven,

The Divine Comedy (translated by H.F. Cary)