| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson: Tantira, Tahiti, Nov. 5, 1888.
XXIX - TO KALAKAUA (With a present of a Pearl)
THE Silver Ship, my King - that was her name
In the bright islands whence your fathers came -
The Silver Ship, at rest from winds and tides,
Below your palace in your harbour rides:
And the seafarers, sitting safe on shore,
Like eager merchants count their treasures o'er.
One gift they find, one strange and lovely thing,
Now doubly precious since it pleased a king.
The right, my liege, is ancient as the lyre
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: The moral end that the author had before him in the
conception of NOTRE DAME DE PARIS was (he tells us) to
"denounce" the external fatality that hangs over men in the
form of foolish and inflexible superstition. To speak
plainly, this moral purpose seems to have mighty little to do
with the artistic conception; moreover it is very
questionably handled, while the artistic conception is
developed with the most consummate success. Old Paris lives
for us with newness of life: we have ever before our eyes the
city cut into three by the two arms of the river, the boat-
shaped island "moored" by five bridges to the different
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