| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Blue Flower by Henry van Dyke: misgivings of the twilight melted away, and at bedtime I
dropped into the nest of sleep as one who has found a shelter
among friends.
II
The Hilltop School stood on a blessed site. Lifted high above
the village, it held the crest of the last gentle wave of the
mountains that filled the south with crowding billows, ragged
and tumultuous. Northward, the great plain lay at our feet,
smiling in the sun; meadows and groves, yellow fields of
harvest and green orchards, white roads and clustering towns,
with here and there a little city on the bank of the mighty
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson: "You may swear that we are solid, you may say that we are strong,
But we know that we are neither and we say that you are wrong;
You may find an easy worship in acclaiming our indulgence,
But your large admiration of us now is not for long.
"If your doom is to adore us with a doubt that's never still,
And you pray to see our faces -- pray in earnest, and you will.
You may gaze at us and live, and live assured of our confusion:
For the False Gods are mortal, and are made for you to kill.
"And you may as well observe, while apprehensively at ease
With an Art that's inorganic and is anything you please,
That anon your newest ruin may lie crumbling unregarded,
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