| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Duchess of Padua by Oscar Wilde: Andreas Pollajuolo, Cardinal of Padua
Maffio Petrucci, }
Jeppo Vitellozzo, } Gentlemen of the Duke's Household
Taddeo Bardi, }
Guido Ferranti, a Young Man
Ascanio Cristofano, his Friend
Count Moranzone, an Old Man
Bernardo Cavalcanti, Lord Justice of Padua
Hugo, the Headsman
Lucy, a Tire woman
Servants, Citizens, Soldiers, Monks, Falconers with their hawks and
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: His successive volumes are: "Children of the Night", 1897;
"Captain Craig", 1902; "The Town Down the River", 1910;
"The Man against the Sky", 1916; "Merlin", 1917; and "Launcelot", 1920.
The last-named volume was awarded a prize of five hundred dollars,
given by The Lyric Society for the best book manuscript offered to it in 1919.
In addition to his work in poetry, Mr. Robinson has written two prose plays,
"Van Zorn", and "The Porcupine".
In "American Poetry Since 1900", Louis Untermeyer notes, "his name was known
only to a few of the literati until Theodore Roosevelt . . .
acclaimed and aided him." Rittenhouse's Biographical Notes (above quoted)
contain this entry immediately before Edwin Arlington Robinson's:
|
| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Altar of the Dead by Henry James: church was unwarmed and exposure to cold forbidden him, but the
glow of his shrine was an influence in which he could almost bask.
He sat and wondered to what he had reduced his absent associate and
what she now did with the hours of her absence. There were other
churches, there were other altars, there were other candles; in one
way or another her piety would still operate; he couldn't
absolutely have deprived her of her rites. So he argued, but
without contentment; for he well enough knew there was no other
such rare semblance of the mountain of light she had once mentioned
to him as the satisfaction of her need. As this semblance again
gradually grew great to him and his pious practice more regular, he
|
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 Recruit by Honore de Balzac: staircase, listening if any sound were breaking the silence of the
street. She smiled at Brigitte's husband, who was standing sentinel at
the door, and whose eyes seemed stupefied by the intensity of his
attention to the murmurs of the street and night.
Madame de Dey re-entered her salon, affecting gaiety, and began to
play loto with the young people; but after a while she complained of
feeling ill, and returned to her chimney-corner.
Such was the situation of affairs, and of people's minds in the house
of Madame de Dey, while along the road, between Paris and Cherbourg, a
young man in a brown jacket, called a "carmagnole," worn de rigueur at
that period, was making his way to Carentan. When drafts for the army
|
