Today's Stichomancy for Simon Bolivar

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Charmides and Other Poems by Oscar Wilde:

And birds are loud in Arcady, The sheep lie bleating in the fold, The wild goat runs across the wold, But yesterday his love he told, I know he will come back to me. O rising moon! O Lady moon! Be you my lover's sentinel, You cannot choose but know him well, For he is shod with purple shoon, You cannot choose but know my love, For he a shepherd's crook doth bear,

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Tattine by Ruth Ogden [Mrs. Charles W. Ide]:

Doctor and Betsy; just think how fond they are of you and me. Why, the very sight of us always makes them beat a tattoo with their tails."

"Yes, I know, Mamma, but I can't feel somehow that tattoos with their tails make up for killing rabbits with their teeth."

CHAPTER II. A MAPLE-WAX MORNING

A team came rushing in between the gate-posts of the stone wall, and it looked like a run-away. They were riderless and driverless, and if there had been any harness, there was not a vestige of it to be seen; still, they kept neck and neck, which means in horsey language side by side, and on they came in the maddest fashion. Tattine stood on the front porch and watched them in high glee, and not a bit afraid was she, though they were coming straight in her

The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Madam How and Lady Why by Charles Kingsley:

into her own hands, and bade the old forest trees and plants come back again--as they would come if they were not stopped year by year, down from the wood, over the pastures--killing the rich grasses as they went, till they met another forest coming up from below, and fought it for many a year, till both made peace, and lived quietly side by side for ages.

Another forest coming up from below? Where would it come from?

From where it is now. Come down and look along the brook, and every drain and grip which runs into the brook. What is here?

Seedling alders, and some withies among them.

Very well. You know how we pull these alders up, and cut them

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 King Lear by William Shakespeare:

Osw. So please you- Exit. Lear. What says the fellow there? Call the clotpoll back. [Exit a Knight.] Where's my fool, ho? I think the world's asleep.

[Enter Knight]

How now? Where's that mongrel? Knight. He says, my lord, your daughter is not well. Lear. Why came not the slave back to me when I call'd him? Knight. Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner, he would not. Lear. He would not?

King Lear