| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Man against the Sky by Edwin Arlington Robinson: "Not so," he said; "not so, at all:
I've tried the world, and found it good,
For more than twenty years this fall.
"And what the world has left of me
Will go now in a little while."
And what the world had left of him
Was partly an unholy guile.
"That I have paid for being calm
Is what you see, if you have eyes;
For let a man be calm too long,
He pays for much before he dies.
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The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from A Voyage to Abyssinia by Father Lobo: excited a loathing and aversion which nothing but extreme necessity
could have overcome.
Having travelled some days, we were met by the King's brother, to
whom, by the advice of Chec Furt, whose intent in following us was
to squeeze all he could from us; we presented some pieces of Chinese
workmanship, such as cases of boxes, a standish, and some
earthenware, together with several pieces of painted calico, which
were so much more agreeable, that he desired some other pieces
instead of our Chinese curiosities; we willingly made the exchange.
Yet some time afterwards he asked again for those Chinese goods
which he had returned us, nor was it in our power to refuse them. I
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