| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you -- this?
Look around you and be sorry you're not living in an attic,
With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent.
I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters;
And I grant, if you insist, that I've a guess at what you meant."
"Have I told you, then, for nothing, that I met him? Are you trying
To be merry while you try to make me hate you?"
"Think again,
My dear, before you tell me, in a language unbecoming
To a lady, what you plan to tell me next. If I complain,
If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you mention --
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Rezanov by Gertrude Atherton: general flaccidity of his race and conquered life
without the great social advantages he inherited, he
had enjoyed power and pleasure to a degree that
would have spoiled a coarser nature long since.
True, the time had come when he had cared little
for any of his endowments save as a means to great
ends, when all his energies had concentrated in the
determination to live a life of the highest possible
usefulness--without which man's span was but exist-
ence--his ambitions had cohered and been driven
steadily toward a permanent niche in history; then
Rezanov |
