| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Children of the Night by Edwin Arlington Robinson: To the slopes of other valleys and the sounds of other shores.
Come away! come away! you can hear them calling, calling,
Calling us to come to them, and roam no more.
Over there beyond the ridges and the land that lies between us,
There's an old song calling us to come!
Come away! come away! -- for the scenes we leave behind us
Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that's young forever;
And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind,
That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains.
The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men before us,
And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten thousand years;
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Men of Iron by Howard Pyle: in defending the passage-way between their two cots against the
attack of three other lads, and Myles held his sheepskin coverlet
rolled up into a ball and balanced in his hand, ready for
launching at the head of one of the others so soon as it should
rise from behind the shelter of a cot. Just then Walter Blunt,
dressed with more than usual care, passed by on his way to the
Earl's house. He stopped for a moment and said, "Mayhaps I will
not be in until late to-night. Thou and Falworth, Gascoyne, may
fetch water to-morrow.
Then he was gone. Myles stood staring after his retreating figure
with eyes open and mouth agape, still holding the ball of
 Men of Iron |