The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot: in Translation_ (Harvard Oriental Series). Mr. Warren was one
of the great pioneers of Buddhist studies in the Occident.
309. From St. Augustine's CONFESSIONS again. The col-location
of these two representatives of eastern and western asceticism,
as the culmination of this part of the poem, is not an accident.
V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID
In the first part of Part V three themes are employed:
the journey to Emmaus, the approach to the Chapel Perilous
(see Miss Weston's book), and the present decay of eastern Europe.
357. This is _Turdus aonalaschkae pallasii_, the hermit-thrush
which I have heard in Quebec County. Chapman says (_Handbook of
The Waste Land |
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 The Troll Garden and Selected Stories by Willa Cather: mother was dead, and his father, who was feverishly absorbed in
promoting schemes, wanted to send the boy away to school and get
him off his hands; but Arthur always begged off for another year
and promised to study. I remember him as a tall, brown boy with an
intelligent face, always lounging among a lot of us little fellows,
laughing at us oftener than with us, but such a soft, satisfied
laugh that we felt rather flattered when we provoked it. In
after-years people said that Arthur had been given to evil ways
as a ]ad, and it is true that we often saw him with the gambler's
sons and with old Spanish Fanny's boy, but if he learned anything
ugly in their company he never betrayed it to us. We would have
The Troll Garden and Selected Stories |