Today's Stichomancy for Will Wright

The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The House of Dust by Conrad Aiken:

The tiny fire leaps in your eyes a moment, And dwindles away as silently as it came.

This melody, you say, has certain voices-- They rise like nereids from a river, singing, Lift white faces, and dive to darkness again. Wherever you go you bear this river with you: A leaf falls,--and it flows, and you have pain.

So says the tune to you--but what to me? What to the waiter, as he pours your coffee, The violinist who suavely draws his bow? That man, who folds his paper, overhears it.

The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson:

The songs you sing, the tales you tell, Till far to-morrow, fare you well!

2. Shadow March

All around the house is the jet-black night; It stares through the window-pane; It crawls in the corners, hiding from the light, And it moves with the moving flame.

Now my little heart goes a beating like a drum, With the breath of the Bogies in my hair; And all around the candle and the crooked shadows come, And go marching along up the stair.

A Child's Garden of Verses

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 all are spilled -- unless you cling alone With Washington. Ask Adams about that.

HAMILTON

We'll not ask Adams about anything. We fish for lizards when we choose to ask For what we know already is not coming, And we must eat the answer. Where's the use Of asking when this man says everything, With all his tongues of silence?

BURR

I dare say.

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 Dark Lady of the Sonnets by George Bernard Shaw:

intellectual Caliban. True, a Caliban who could say

Be not afeard: the isle is full of noises Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices, That, if I then had waked after long sleep Will make me sleep again; and then, in dreaming, The clouds, methought, would open and shew riches Ready to drop on me: that when I wak'd I cried to dream again.