| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Love Songs by Sara Teasdale: the inward illumination, the high vision that characterize the poetry
that will endure the test of time." -- `Review of Reviews'.
"`Rivers to the Sea' is a book of sheer delight. . . . Her touch
turns everything to song." -- Edward J. Wheeler, in `Current Opinion'.
"Sara Teasdale's lyrics have the clarity, the precision,
the grace and fragrance of flowers." -- Harriet Monroe, in `Poetry'.
"Sara Teasdale has a genius for the song, for the perfect lyric,
in which the words seem to have fallen into place without art or effort."
-- Louis Untermeyer, in `The Chicago Evening Post'.
"`Rivers to the Sea' is the best book of pure lyrics
that has appeared in English since A. E. Housman's `A Shropshire Lad'."
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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 Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs: or by thunder that the five occupants of the room were
suddenly startled by a strange pattering sound from
the floor below. It was as the questioning fall of a child's
feet upon the uncarpeted boards in the room beneath
them. Frozen to silent rigidity, the five sat straining ev-
ery faculty to catch the minutest sound from the black
void where the dead man lay, and as they listened there
came up to them, mingled with the inexplicable foot-
steps, the hollow reverberation from the dank cellar--
the hideous dragging of the chain behind the nameless
horror which had haunted them through the intermin-
The Oakdale Affair |
