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 Polity of Athenians and Lacedaemonians by Xenophon:

by night, and in the daytime he must employ shifts and lie in ambuscade; he must prepare and make ready his scouts, and so forth, if he is to succeed in capturing the quarry.[16]

[15] See "Anab." IV. vi. 14.

[16] For the institution named the {krupteia}, see Plut. "Lycurg." 28 (Clough, i. 120); Plato, "Laws," i. 633 B; for the {klopeia}, ib. vii. 823 E; Isocr. "Panathen." 277 B.

It is obvious, I say, that the whole of this education tended, and was intended, to make the boys craftier and more inventive in getting in supplies, whilst at the same time it cultivated their warlike instincts. An objector may retort: "But if he thought it so fine a

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

watering-place with a rich patient; in fact, he was making a practice for him. The consequence was that in the course of time the Tyrant of surgery had a devoted ally. These two men--one at the summit of honor and of his science, enjoying an immense fortune and an immense reputation; the other a humble Omega, having neither fortune nor fame--became intimate friends.

The great Desplein told his house surgeon everything; the disciple knew whether such or such a woman had sat on a chair near the master, or on the famous couch in Desplein's surgery, on which he slept. Bianchon knew the mysteries of that temperament, a compound of the lion and the bull, which at last expanded and

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte by Karl Marx:

always with the gloss that it is unlimited in so far only as it be not curtailed by the "equal rights of others," and by the "public safety," or by the "laws," which are intended to effect this harmony. For instance:

"Citizens have the right of association, of peaceful and unarmed assemblage, of petitioning, and of expressing their opinions through the press or otherwise. The enjoyment of these rights has no limitation other than the equal rights of others and the public safety." (Chap. II. of the French Constitution, Section 8.)

"Education is free. The freedom of education shall be enjoyed under the conditions provided by law, and under the supervision of the State."

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 Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare:

And pay them at thy leisure, one by one. What is ten hundred touches unto thee? Are they not quickly told and quickly gone? 520 Say, for non-payment that the debt should double, Is twenty hundred kisses such a trouble?'

'Fair queen,' quoth he, 'if any love you owe me, Measure my strangeness with my unripe years: 524 Before I know myself, seek not to know me; No fisher but the ungrown fry forbears: The mellow plum doth fall, the green sticks fast, Or being early pluck'd is sour to taste. 528