The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from Master and Man by Leo Tolstoy: front of the sledge to the wind he tied the shafts together
with a strap and set them up on end in front of the sledge.
'There now, when the snow covers us up, good folk will see the
shafts and dig us out,' he said, slapping his mittens together
and putting them on. 'That's what the old folk taught us!'
Vasili Andreevich meanwhile had unfastened his coat, and
holding its skirts up for shelter, struck one sulphur match
after another on the steel box. But his hands trembled, and
one match after another either did not kindle or was blown out
by the wind just as he was lifting it to the cigarette. At
last a match did burn up, and its flame lit up for a moment the
Master and Man |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from Familiar Studies of Men and Books by Robert Louis Stevenson: poems. This is as far as it can be from the case of the
spontaneous village minstrel dear to elegy, who has no theory
whatever, although sometimes he may have fully as much poetry
as Whitman. The whole of Whitman's work is deliberate and
preconceived. A man born into a society comparatively new,
full of conflicting elements and interests, could not fail,
if he had any thoughts at all, to reflect upon the tendencies
around him. He saw much good and evil on all sides, not yet
settled down into some more or less unjust compromise as in
older nations, but still in the act of settlement. And he
could not but wonder what it would turn out; whether the
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