| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Mosses From An Old Manse by Nathaniel Hawthorne: the fourth day, I found him faint and exhausted; he was unable to
proceed; his life had ebbed away fast; and--"
"He died!" exclaimed Dorcas, faintly.
Reuben felt it impossible to acknowledge that his selfish love of
life had hurried him away before her father's fate was decided.
He spoke not; he only bowed his head; and, between shame and
exhaustion, sank back and hid his face in the pillow. Dorcas wept
when her fears were thus confirmed; but the shock, as it had been
long anticipated. was on that account the less violent.
"You dug a grave for my poor father in the wilderness, Reuben?"
was the question by which her filial piety manifested itself.
Mosses From An Old Manse |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne: to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment,
but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest
handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit?
Because, probably, at his highest elevation, the poet needs no human
intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger.
There was something very beautiful in the relation that grew up
between this pair, so closely and constantly linked together, yet
with such a waste of gloomy and mysterious years from his birthday
to hers. On Clifford's part it was the feeling of a man naturally
endowed with the liveliest sensibility to feminine influence, but
who had never quaffed the cup of passionate love, and knew that it
House of Seven Gables |
