Today's Stichomancy for Paul McCartney

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Complete Poems of Longfellow by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

PRINCE HENRY. We must all die, and not the old alone; The young have no exemption from that doom.

ABBOT. Ah, yes! the young may die, but the old must! That is the difference.

PRINCE HENRY. I have heard much laud Of your transcribers, Your Scriptorium Is famous among all; your manuscripts Praised for their beauty and their excellence.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Elixir of Life by Honore de Balzac:

against the barbarous answer to his father's speech.

"I bear you no grudge, my child," Bartolommeo went on.

The words were full of kindness, but they hurt Don Juan; he could not pardon this heart-searching goodness on his father's part.

"What a remorseful memory for me!" he cried, hypocritically.

"Poor Juanino," the dying man went on, in a smothered voice, "I have always been so kind to you, that you could not surely desire my death?"

"Oh, if it were only possible to keep you here by giving up a part of my own life!" cried Don Juan.

("We can always SAY this sort of thing," the spendthrift thought;

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Lucile by Owen Meredith:

With a sneer at her freedom of action and speech. But its light careless cavils, in truth, could not reach The lone heart they aim'd at. Her tears fell beyond The world's limit, to feel that the world could respond To that heart's deepest, innermost yearning, in naught, 'Twas no longer this earth's idle inmates she sought: The wit of the woman sufficed to engage In the woman's gay court the first men of the age. Some had genius; and all, wealth of mind to confer On the world: but that wealth was not lavish'd for her. For the genius of man, though so human indeed,

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 Ballads by Robert Louis Stevenson:

AND now there was speech in the south, And a man of the south that was wise, A periwig'd lord of London, (2) Called on the clans to rise. And the riders rode, and the summons Came to the western shore, To the land of the sea and the heather, To Appin and Mamore. It called on all to gather From every scrog and scaur, That loved their fathers' tartan

Ballads