| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane: cantering cluster. He stopped then and began
to peer as best he could through the smoke. He
caught changing views of the ground covered
with men who were all running like pursued
imps, and yelling.
To the youth it was an onslaught of redoubt-
able dragons. He became like the man who lost
his legs at the approach of the red and green
monster. He waited in a sort of a horrified,
listening attitude. He seemed to shut his eyes
and wait to be gobbled.
The Red Badge of Courage |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Snow Image by Nathaniel Hawthorne: own handiwork. Creation was not finished till the poet came to
interpret, and so complete it.
The effect was no less high and beautiful, when his human
brethren were the subject of his verse. The man or woman, sordid
with the common dust of life, who crossed his daily path, and the
little child who played in it, were glorified if he beheld them
in his mood of poetic faith. He showed the golden links of the
great chain that intertwined them with an angelic kindred; he
brought out the hidden traits of a celestial birth that made them
worthy of such kin. Some, indeed, there were, who thought to show
the soundness of their judgment by affirming that all the beauty
The Snow Image |
