Today's Stichomancy for Clive Barker

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Passionate Pilgrim by William Shakespeare:

The sun look'd on the world with glorious eye, Yet not so wistly as this queen on him. He, spying her, bounced in, whereas he stood: 'O Jove,' quoth she, 'why was not I a flood!'

VII.

Fair is my love, but not so fair as fickle; Mild as a dove, but neither true nor trusty; Brighter than glass, and yet, as glass is brittle; Softer than wax, and yet, as iron, rusty: A lily pale, with damask dye to grace her, None fairer, nor none falser to deface her.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Poems of William Blake by William Blake:

And all thy moans flew o'er my roof, but I have call'd them down: Wilt thou O Queen enter my house, tis given thee to enter, And to return: fear nothing, enter with thy virgin feet.

IV.

The eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar: Thel enter'd in & saw the secrets of the land unknown; She saw the couches of the dead, & where the fibrous roots Of every heart on earth infixes deep its restless twists: A land of sorrows & of tears where never smile was seen.

She wandered in the land of clouds thro' valleys dark, listning Dolors & lamentations: waiting oft beside the dewy grave

Poems of William Blake

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The American by Henry James:

to New York, and sat for three days in the lobby of his hotel, looking out through a huge wall of plate-glass at the unceasing stream of pretty girls in Parisian-looking dresses, undulating past with little parcels nursed against their neat figures. At the end of three days he returned to San Francisco, and having arrived there he wished he had stayed away. He had nothing to do, his occupation was gone, and it seemed to him that he should never find it again. He had nothing to do here, he sometimes said to himself; but there was something beyond the ocean that he was still to do; something that he had left undone experimentally and speculatively, to see if it could

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 She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith:

Enter Servant.

SERVANT. Your fan, muff, and gloves, madam. The horses are waiting.

MISS NEVILLE. O, Mr. Marlow! if you knew what a scene of constraint and ill-nature lies before me, I'm sure it would convert your resentment into pity.

MARLOW. I'm so distracted with a variety of passions, that I don't know what I do. Forgive me, madam. George, forgive me. You know my hasty temper, and should not exasperate it.

HASTINGS. The torture of my situation is my only excuse.

MISS NEVILLE. Well, my dear Hastings, if you have that esteem for me that I think, that I am sure you have, your constancy for three years

She Stoops to Conquer