| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Christ in Flanders by Honore de Balzac: pale and wan, but its hues changed, and the surface took all the
colors of steel. The sky was almost overspread with livid gray, but
down in the west there were long narrow bars like streaks of blood;
while lines of bright light in the eastern sky, sharp and clean as if
drawn by the tip of a brush, were separated by folds of cloud, like
the wrinkles on an old man's brow. The whole scene made a background
of ashen grays and half-tints, in strong contrast to the bale-fires of
the sunset. If written language might borrow of spoken language some
of the bold figures of speech invented by the people, it might be said
with the soldier that "the weather has been routed," or, as the
peasant would say, "the sky glowered like an executioner." Suddenly a
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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 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: it be otherwise? Why should a wretched man -- guilty, we will
say, of murder -- prefer to keep the dead corpse buried in his
own heart, rather than fling it forth at once, and let the
universe take care of it!"
"Yet some men bury their secrets thus," observed the calm
physician.
"True; there are such men," answered Mr. Dimmesdale. "But not
to suggest more obvious reasons, it may be that they are kept
silent by the very constitution of their nature. Or -- can we
The Scarlet Letter |
