Today's Stichomancy for Robert Frost

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Research Magnificent by H. G. Wells:

background the greater share of his attention. . . .

It was only as White burrowed through his legacy of documents that the full values came to very many things that Benham said during these last conversations. The papers fitted in with his memories of their long talks like text with commentary; so much of Benham's talk had repeated the private writings in which he had first digested his ideas that it was presently almost impossible to disentangle what had been said and understood at Johannesburg from the fuller statement of those patched and corrected manuscripts. The two things merged in White's mind as he read. The written text took

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Extracts From Adam's Diary by Mark Twain:

dangerous.

Four Months Later

I have been off hunting and fishing a month, up in the region that she calls Buffalo; I don't know why, unless it is because there are not any buffaloes there. Meantime the bear has learned to paddle around all by itself on its hind legs, and says "poppa" and "momma." It is certainly a new species. This resemblance to words may be purely accidental, of course, and may have no purpose or meaning; but even in that case it is still extraordinary, and is a thing which no other bear can do. This imitation of speech, taken together with general absence of fur and entire absence of

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Three Taverns by Edwin Arlington Robinson:

And women were for wiser endurances," He said, "we might have yet a world here Fitter for Truth to be seen abroad in;

"If Truth were not so strange in her nakedness, And we were less forbidden to look at it, We might not have to look." He stared then Down at the sand where the tide threw forward

Its cold, unconquered lines, that unceasingly Foamed against hope, and fell. He was calm enough, Although he knew he might be silenced Out of all calm; and the night was coming.

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 Prufrock/Other Observations by T. S. Eliot:

We have been, let us say, to hear the latest Pole Transmit the Preludes, through his hair and finger tips. "So intimate, this Chopin, that I think his soul Should be resurrected only among friends Some two or three, who will not touch the bloom That is rubbed and questioned in the concert room." --And so the conversation slips Among velleities and carefully caught regrets Through attenuated tones of violins Mingled with remote cornets And begins.

Prufrock/Other Observations