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1.Gazing far, etc.
Another remarkable description of the sky and prairie and their effect upon Hugh.
Make a list of epithets descriptive of both sky and prairie as you find them on pages26–27–28–29–30–32–34–36–39. Epithets may be adjectives or verbs or nouns. Such are “globose immensity,” “smoky steep,” “serene antagonist,” “negativity of might.”
9.Seemed that vast negativity of might; etc.
In what sense is the might of distance negative?
What was the “frustrate vision of the night”?
What does the poet mean by saying it came “moonwise”?
What is Hugh’s mood when he feels that the foe is “naught but yielding air”?
13.A vacancy to fill with his intent!
What is the grammatical construction of “to fill”?
15.Three-footed; and the vision goaded him.
What vision “goaded him”?
24.Served but to brew more venom for his hate,
Why is hate spoken of as venomous? What has modern Physiology to say of this?
25.And nerved him to avail the most with least.
What is meant by “avail the most with least”?
10.Devoured the chance-flung manna of the plains
“Manna”—what is the reference?
18.The coulee deepened; yellow walls flung high, etc.
Accurate description of arid conditions by their effect on Hugh.
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6.It had the acrid tang of broken trust
7.The sweetish, tepid taste of feigning love!
A projection of the subjective into the objective.
14.Clear as a friend’s heart, ‘twas, and seeming cool—
The same as above.
22.And lo, the tang of that wide insolence
23.Of sky and plain was acrid in the draught!
Note again the attitude of nature, as Hugh sees it, in its “wide insolence.”
25.How like fine sentiment the mirrored sky etc.
The cruelty of sentimentalism. Note on this page the steps by which the sense of thirst is induced in the reader and the corresponding disappointment increased; “dry as strewn bones bleaching to a desert sky,” “grateful ooze,” “sucked the mud,” “sweetish, tepid taste,” “taunted thirst,” “damp spots,” then the description of the pool and the “famished horses.” Is not the reader as thirsty as Hugh and nearly as keenly disappointed?
8.Nor did he rise till, vague with stellar light, etc.
Compare with Bryant’s “Forest Hymn.”
At what line does Hugh fall asleep? At what line does he begin to awake? How many days since “The Crawl” began?
17.And Hugh lay gazing till the whole resolved etc.
What is the difference between this dream and that of the previous night? Why? Does Hugh still love Jamie? Would he kill him in such a mood? How many lines in the dream?
Define: specious, gulch, buttressing, Host, nave, architrave.
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Hugh has not yet reached the prairie on the divide between the Grand and the Moreau, though he has journeyed two days. How far do you think he has crawled?
3.Loath to go, Hugh lay beside the pool and pondered fate, etc.
Why is Hugh less eager to renew his journey than on the previous morning? Do you suppose his dream had anything to do with the matter? His weariness?
11.Sustaining wrath returning with the toil.
Why does wrath return?
23.Of strength that had so very much to buy.
What had his strength “to buy”?
Define: efface, cauldron.
11.Sleep out the glare. With groping hands for sight,
Hugh sleeps on the afternoon of the third day of his journey.
Explain “groping hands for sight.”
14.Or sensed—the dusky mystery of plain.
Why dusky mystery? Can you see a prairie by starlight?
15.Gazing aloft, he found the capsized Wain
“Capsized Wain,” Bear. What time of night?
16–17.Thereto he set his back;
What direction did he take? How much knowledge of the constellations must have meant to primitive men! To sailors! To hunters! Read Bryant’s “Hymn to the North Star.”
19.The star-blanched summit of a lonely butte
20.And thitherward he dragged his heavy limb.
Note the butte used to guide the crawler. Could a plainsman see a butte by starlight? Could a “tenderfoot”?
21.It seemed naught moved, etc.
The movement on a prairie and in the night seems objectless.
It gives a supreme sense of monotony. Time stopped. We measure time by events; no events, no time.
Define: blanched, incipient.
4.Sheer deep upon unfathomable deep, etc.
A curious but vivid figure, expressing a sense of darkness and uninterrupted silence.
8.So lapsed the drowsy æon of the night—
The monotony makes the hours seem a moment drawn out.
10.And then, as quickened to somnambulance, etc.
Note the steps of the dawning, and the suddenness of the coming of day. The description is not only vivid but accurate.
20.Scarce had he munched the hoarded roots, when came etc.
Why the difference between this and previous dreams?
Define “tensile.”
8.It was the hour when cattle straggle home etc.
A fine lyric. This is one of many memory pictures of Hugh’s travels. Nothing in the poem tells directly of Hugh’s past.
This silence suggests tragedy dimly illumined by the memory pictures. Is Hugh an imaginative man? Enumerate the evening sounds. Note the steps marking the transition from evening to night. How many days has Hugh crawled? Hugh is known to have been a Pennsylvanian of Scotch descent.
Define “peripheries.”
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1.Blank as the face of fate. In listless mood etc.
Fate is associated with the inevitable and unrevealed. “In listless mood” etc.—the end of a day of feverish dreams finds Hugh weakened and caring less to live.
3.And met the night. The new moon, low and far, etc.
Note the phase of the moon.
7.The kiote voiced the universal lack.
Hunger.
8.As from a nether fire, the plain gave back
9.The swelter of the noon-glare to the gloom.
The heat of the prairie is often very noticeable after sunset.
12.Why seek some further nowhere on the plain?
What “nowhere”?
14.So spoke some loose-lipped spirit of despair;
Why “loose-lipped”?
15.And still Hugh moved, volitionless—a weight, etc.
Volitionless—The power of habit is compared to that of the moon over the tides.
18.Now when the night wore on in middle swoon,
21.To breathe became an act of conscious will.
22.The starry waste was ominously still.
24.As through a tunnel in the atmosphere—
Note the steps of the coming storm:middle swoon, a drowsy night, stifling condition of the air, utter silence with sense of impending disaster,as through a tunnel, etc.
The description of the storm is exact to the minutest detail. It is not interspersed with more or less sentimental comments as is Byron’s description of the storm on the Alps (Childe Harold, Canto III), yet it gains in power by its adherence to truth.
PAGE49
4.An oily film seemed spread upon the sky
Storm still approaching. “The oily film,” the gradual darkening of the atmosphere.
9.Upon hell’s burlesque sabbath for the lost,
What could be more hopeless than “Sabbath in Hell”?
12.Hugh chose not, yet he crawled;
Habit keeps him moving.
13.He felt the futile strife was nearly o’er.
Hugh will die unless relief comes.
14.And as he went, a muffled rumbling grew,
Far away thunder, the next step in the approach of the storm.
16.Somehow ‘twas coextensive with his thirst,
Confusion of objective and subjective, a not uncommon experience of extreme weakness.
12.Star-hungry, ranged in regular array, etc.
Note the use of constellations to indicate the vast expanse and swift movement of the cloud; another illustration of the poet’s power to see things in the large. Locate the constellations named.
Explain the figure, “star-hungry.”
19.Deep in the further murk sheet-lightning flared.
Sheet-lightning—covering the sky like a sheet, sometimes called heat lightning—a common phenomenon in prairie storms.
24.What turmoil now? Lo, ragged columns hurled, etc.
Explain “ragged columns.”
2.Along the solid rear a dull boom runs!
Explain “solid rear.”
11.Reveals the butte-top tall and lonely there
12.Like some gray prophet contemplating doom.
The second time the butte has been described.
16.Ghosts of the ancient forest—or old rain, etc.
Geology tells us that these plains were once covered with forests.
19.That e’er evolving, ne’er resolving sound
20.Gropes in the stifling hollow of the night.
Never fully developing. “Evolving,” “resolving”—technical expressions in music.
The rush of the rain, the constant flare of lightning, the sudden cessation, as well as the slow and dread beginning, are characteristic of storms in semi-arid countries. This poem reveals every phase of nature on the prairies and none more vividly than the storm.
Define: hurtling, wassail, sardonic, flaw, ravin, murk, cosmic, sodden.
3.The butte soared, like a soul serene and white
4.Because of the katharsis of the night.
The butte appears again, this time as the symbol of a soul that has struggled and triumphed. The principle of Katharsis, purification, is a principle of the Greek drama as worked out by Aristotle. To what degree is it a principle of life?
5.All day Hugh fought with sleep and struggled on
Which day? Why does Hugh no longer travel at night?
16.Hope flared in Hugh, until the memory came
17.Of him who robbed a sleeping friend and fled.
Explain.
18.Then hate and hunger merged; etc.
Note again that Hugh finds Jamie’s treachery everywhere. It is an obsession with him.
Define “amethyst.”
How many days has Hugh crawled? How far has he journeyed?
5.Swooped by. The dream of crawling and the act etc.
An appeal to the muscular sense.
Such dreams bespeak extreme weariness.
8.The butte, outstripped at eventide, now seemed etc.
The butte now becomes the measure of a progress infinitely slow, a source of discouragement.
13.Whose hand-in-pocket saunter kept the pace.
Why “hand-in-pocket”?
16.What rest and plenty on the other side!
Hugh must have encouragement. The break in the prairie, the crest of the divide, furnishes that. Explain the psychology. How far is the divide from the Grand?
20.All day it seemed that distant Pisgah Height
Why “Pisgah”?
Define “lush.”
Hugh is near to starvation. The adventure with the gopher goes from waking reality to dream on the following night and to waking dream the next day, revealing how sick Hugh had become.
10.The battered gray face leered etc.
Note that the vivid picture of the face of Hugh is secured by the choice of a few meaningful words, battered, leered, slaver, anticipating jaws.
13.Evolving twilight hovered to a pause
The twilight pause means what?
18.Hugh jerked the yarn. It broke.
Note the brevity of the climax, “It broke.”
19.Down swooped the night,
How many days of journeying? The dream is a nightmare while the previous one was relatively peaceful. Why the difference?
3.Woke hordes of laughers down the giddy yawn
What “hordes of laughers”?
5.Dream dawn, dream-noon, dream-twilight!
Night and day are “telescoped” for Hugh by the monotony of crawling either awake or in dreams and never getting anywhere.
17.Dream-dawn, dream-noon, dream-night! And still obsessed
Why the repetition?
18.By that one dream more clamorous than the rest,
What is the one dream? Why is it a dream?
Define: gully, turbid, relict.
3.Yet had the pleasant lie befriended him,
4.And now the brutal fact had come to stare.
What was the “pleasant lie”? The brutal fact?
7.And nursed that deadly adder of the soul,
8.Self-pity. Let the crows swoop down and feed, etc.
Sentimentalism is soul-flabbiness.
15.And lo, a finger-nail, etc.
The accumulation of great results by infinitesimal accretions is one of the everlasting surprises in life.
21.So fare the wise on Pisgah.
How do the wise use their Pisgahs? To enjoy or to inspire to further effort?
Define: facture, dwarfed, Titan, triumvirate.
2.Some higher Hugh observed the baser part.
What was the higher, what the baser part?
3.So sits the artist throned above his art, etc.
The hurt is nothing, the achievement is all. No man who is worth anything but counts his work as more than all else.
5.It seemed the wrinkled hills pressed in to stare, etc.
The manifestations of nature become Hugh’s audience and he falls into the throes of composition. Most of our thinking is in words uttered to persons present, absent, or imagined.
11.So wrought the old evangel of high daring, etc.
The true philosophy of life, to be a “victor in the moment.”
23.That day the wild geese flew
What is the effect of their cries? Describe the appearance of the sky.
Define: recks, travail, evangel.
Present, past and fancy are all mingled in Hugh’s experiences this day, showing his weakened condition, and the feeling for Jamie obsesses him.
9.Hate slept that day,
Was it hate or an inversion of love?
18.At last the buzzard beak no longer tore
What “buzzard beak”?
Define: lethargy, maudlin.
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4.And now serenely beautiful etc.
These lines were suggested to the author by a picture, “The Death of Absalom.”
6.Thus vexed with doleful whims the crawler went etc.
Hugh would have died at this time had he not drifted into the rugged vale.
11.Told how the gray-winged gale blew out the day.
Why “gray-winged”?
20.It seemed no wind had ever come that way,
21.Nor sound dwelt there, nor echo found the place.
How is utter quiet expressed!
7.Returning hunger bade him rise; in vain
8.He struggled with a fine-spun mesh of pain etc.
An appeal to muscular sense.
16.In that hip-wound he had for Jamie’s sake
That “hip-wound” brings back the desire for revenge, a close association of ideas. Have you had such experiences?
19.Was turned again with every puckering twinge.
“Puckering twinge,” another appeal to muscular sense.
20.Far down the vale a narrow winding fringe etc.
Having passed the divide Hugh slept at the head of a valley that farther down becomes the bed of a little creek flowing into the Moreau.
Define: mesh, trammelled, puckering, betokened.
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6.These two, as comrades, struggled south together—
Contrast the two “comrades,” each journeying to the many fathomed peace, one consumed with “lust to kill,” the other singing on the way. A bit of wise philosophy is suggested.
9.And one went crooning of the moon-wooed vast;
What is the “moon-wooed vast” and to what is it compared?
12.All streams ran thin; and when he pressed a hand etc.
Why did he do this?
20.Far-spread, shade-dimpled in the level glow,
Another of many sunset pictures in the poem and no two are alike. “Far-spread, shade-dimpled in the level glow,” a prairie sunset in one line.
24.Hugh saw what seemed the tempest of a dream
Why a “dream” tempest?
Define: phasic, weather-breeding.
3.A dust cloud deepened down the dwindling river;
4.Upon the distant tree-tops ran a shiver etc.
Note the pictures suggested in “dust cloud deepened,” “upon the distant tree-tops ran a shiver,” “huddle thickets writhed,” “green gloom gapes,” “mill and wrangle in a turbid flow.”
13.Bound for the winter pastures of the Platte!
The Platte was an especially fine bison country.
17.The lopped moon weltered in the dust-bleared East.
How long since Hugh began his journey?
18.Sleep came and gave a Barmecidal feast.
In the Arabian Nights one of the Barmecides, a wealthy family,served a beggar a pretended feast on beautiful dishes that were empty.
19.About a merry flame were simmering etc.
The appeal to the sense of hunger is powerful. Compare Vergil, Æneid, Book I, 210–215.
21.And tender tongues that never tasted snow,
Why “never tasted snow”?
2.So sounds a freshet when the banks are full etc.
Note comparison of the movement of the herd to a swollen river clogged bydébris.
8.Through which the wolves in doleful tenson tossed
Tenson: among the troubadours a contest between two singers.
9.From hill to hill the ancient hunger-song.
Hunger is the oldest form of suffering, and prayer for food the oldest prayer.
15.With some gray beast that fought with icy fang.
Why “icy” fang? “white world”?
Define: eerie, myriads.
8.The herd would pass and vanish in the night
How long was the herd in passing?
During this time, and for fifty years thereafter, bison herds often covered the plains as far as the eye could see. In the 60’s travellers on the old Oregon trail often journeyed through one solid herd for as much as three days, and on either side the prairie was filled to the horizon.
23.So might a child assail the crowding sea!
The comparison of the on-rushing herd to high sea tide, notable in itself, is greatly strengthened by the comparison of Hugh to a child assaulting the waters. Note the impulse of the defeated to act in absurd ways. Note the epithet, “crowding.”
2.Slept till the white of morning o’er the hill
3.Was like a whisper groping in a hush.
The comparison of light to sound, “the white of morning like a whisper,” is unusual but true.
4.The stream’s low trill seemed loud.
Why seemed the low trill loud?
9.Smacked of the autumn, and a heavy dew etc.
What association of sensations brings the picture of the autumn fields?
Note how quickly the vision passed, an illustration of the author’s power of concentration. Hugh was born in Pennsylvania. What was his father’s business? How do you know from this and other passages? See the lyrical passage on page47.
15.He brooded on the mockeries of Chance,
On page58we saw Hugh in the act of literary composition; now we see him a philosopher. This is a common fact among what we call the “common” people. Note the grave-digger scene in Hamlet, Act V.
Define: smacked, hoar, frore.
1.Revealed the havoc of the living flood, etc.
Point out each word and statement that pictures the havoc wrought in the valley by the herd.
9.A food-devouring plethora of food
Devouring what food? What plethora?
10.Had come to make a starving solitude!
What idea is modified by the word “starving”?
16.That still the weak might perish.
Express this idea in other terms. Note unusual use of the word “still.” State the biological “law of evolution.”
24.Within himself the oldest cause of war
What is the “oldest cause of war”? The newest?
Define: plethora, raucous, guerdon.
8.He saw a bison carcass black with crows, etc.
This picture is unique, cruel, almost revolting, but wonderfully true.
18.To die contending with a living foe,
19.Than fight the yielding distance and the lack.
To engage in a short struggle with a visible foe with a definite end near and certain is far easier than to endure the long drawn and indefinite. This is because man is primarily well equipped for the immediate struggle of hunting and war, but is not gifted by nature with power to endure.
5.The wolf’s a coward, who, in goodly packs, etc.
The wolf pack symbolizes the mob. The law of mob life is cruelty, and cruelty is always cowardly.
10.How some great beast that shambled like a bear
Why “shambled like a bear”?
24.Woe in the silken meshes of the friend,
25.Weal in the might and menace of the foe.
The friend often weakens his friend. The opposition of the enemy develops his strength.
Define: lacerated, vituperative, prodigious, frenzy, weal.
14.When sleep is weirdest and a moment’s flight,
Dreams often come just before waking.
20.Hoof-smitten leagues consuming in a dust.
What is the syntax of “leagues”? Explain the line.
23.A corpse, yet heard the muffled parleying etc.
Note how the idea that he was really dead haunts Hugh both sleeping and waking. Find other places in the poem where this is true.
3.The babble flattened to a blur of gray—
A comparison of sound to light.
15.Could they be the Sioux?
The Sioux had been allies in the Leavenworth Campaign, while the Rees were enemies. Note page1.
Note on this page the vivid picture of the Indians riding in the fog.
24.The outflung feelers of a tribe a-stir
Meaning of “feelers”?
8.And wasna!
Bison meat, shredded, dried, and mixed with bison tallow and dried bullberries, the mixture being packed in bladders.
11.But kinsman of the blood of daring men.
Actual “blood brotherhood” between Indian and White was not uncommon and bravery and loyalty were the basis of such relation.
13.O Friend-Betrayer at the Big Horn’s mouth, etc.
Note how Hugh’s imagination rushes on to the killing of Jamie.
17.From where a cloud of startled blackbirds rose
What startles the blackbirds?
Note on this page, and the next, various hints of the coming of the Indians and how important the matter was to the starving watcher from the bluff.
20.Embroiled the parliament of feathered shrews?
What are the “feathered shrews”?
22.Flackering strepent; now a sooty shower, etc.
“Flackering strepent”—fluttering and noisy, a fitting description of the startled flock; onomatopœia.
The entire picture of the blackbirds is notable. They are a “boiling cloud,” “a sooty shower,” with big flakes and driven by a squall, they are “cold black fire.” All these terms are startling but exact.
Define: parfleche, panniers, maize, parliament, shrews.
4.What augury in orniscopic words
5.Did yon swart sibyls on the morning scrawl?
A rhetorical question to indicate the dread interest Hugh felt in the question “Sioux or Ree?”
Note the fancy that words are written on the sky.
13.In their van
14.Aloof and lonely rode a gnarled old man etc.
“Gnarled” like a tree. A most vivid picture of Elk Tongue, a famous Ree chief.
16.Beneath his heavy years, yet haughtily
17.He wore them like the purple of a king.
His great age is like a royal robe. “Gray hairs are a crown of glory.”
18.Keen for a goal, as from the driving string etc.
In how many and significant ways his face is described in these lines: keen for a goal, like a flinty arrow-head, with a brooding stare. Directions for a statue could scarcely be more exact or more full of suggestion.
Define: ruck, augury, orniscopic, swart, sibyl, attenuated, gnarled, piebald.
Read the entire description of the Indians at one sitting and get the unified effect.
12.Such foeman as no warrior ever slew.
Hunger.
18.And hurled them shivering back upon the beast.
According to the Greek myth men were little better than beasts until Prometheus brought fire to them from heaven in a reed.
How nearly does the myth accord with truth?
21.Hope fed them with a dream of buffalo etc.
With primitive man feast and famine were often close together.
23.Home with their Pawnee cousins on the Platte,
Locate the Platte. The Rees and Pawnees speak the same tongue with slight variations.
Define “ravelled.”
2.The rich-in-ponies rode, etc.
The first scene in the moving picture shows the contrast of rich and poor that existed even in the most primitive society.
3.For much is light and little is a load etc.
What is meant? The sentence is a paradox.
10.Whining because the milk they got was thinned etc.
The squaws with their crying babies are the material of the second scene, followed by the striplings.
14.How fair life is beyond the beckoning blue, etc.
“Distance lends enchantment.”
15.Cold-eyed the grandsires plodded, for they knew, etc.
Note contrasting words: striplings, grandsires; strutted, plodded.
One group saw visions, the other was disillusioned.
17.In what lone land.
What is meant?
20.Stooped to the fancied burden of the race;
What is the “burden of the race”?
25.The lean cayuses toiled.
Cayuse, a broncho, originally one bred by the Cayuse Indians.
27.To see a world flow by on either side,
How does the world “flow by”?
The dog was an ever present feature of Indian life. Note the author’s familiarity with the dog.
12.Yielded to the squaws’
13.Inverted mercy and a slow-won grave.
“The female of the species is more deadly than the male.” Why?
For the sake of the protection of the young. Indian fighters had a special horror of falling into the hands of the squaws.
Hate and love are opposite sides of the same shield. In proportion as woman loves her children and the protectors of them she hates anybody and anything that menaces them.
14.Since Earth’s first mother scolded from a cave
A true picture of social origins.
17.To match the deadly venom brewed above
18.The lean, blue, blinding heart-fires of her love.
Note the witches’ cauldron that bubbles here and the fire that burns below it.
20.But thrice three seasons yet should swell the past, etc.
Glass was killed by the Rees in 1832.
21.So was it writ, ere Fate’s keen harriers etc.
Why is Fate capitalized?
Define: palimpsest, harriers.
3.For that weird pass whereto the fleet are slow,
The fleet are the young, but the old reach the “weird pass” first.
16.Scarce had he crossed the open flat, and won etc.
On this page and the next we have the temptation of Hugh to kill the squaw. (a) Do you feel that Hugh will kill her? (b) Would he be justified in so doing? (c) Would you be satisfied to have the hero of the story slay a weak old woman, though an Indian?
Whom does Hugh see sitting haloed like a saint? (page79)
What impression on Hugh does the whole adventure make?
3.He reached a river. Leaning to a pool etc.
Was the reaction against his own pity natural?
14.That somehow some sly Jamie of a dream
15.Had plundered him again;
Again the obsession concerning Jamie. There seems a suggestion of insanity in this. Is the pursuit of vengeance always insane?
18.Now when the eve in many-shaded grays etc.
Another prairie sunset. Note that every description of the prairie is woven directly into the story. No two are alike.
21.Hugh paused perplexed. Elusive, haunting, dim, etc.
A comparison of pure sense to pure idea is unusual but true, for ideas rest upon sense perception.
Define: crone, fleered.
4.It seemed the sweet
5.Allure of home.
Association by sense of smell—smoke, fire, home in the evening.
12.Hearth-lit within, its windows were as eyes etc.
The comparison of an old farmhouse to an old mother. Point out pathos in each.
21.A two-tongued herald wooing hope and fear,
Meaning? Compare Æneid, Book I, 661.
Select a lyric from this page.
Define: troll, recrudescent.
2.And reached a bluff’s top. In a smudge of red etc.
Another sunset picture. Where were the “pools of gloom”?
How comes the “mottled” effect?
10.He lay upon the bare height, fagged, forlorn,
Hugh is again near to collapse.
17.Then with a start etc.
How well the first stage of the finding and appropriation of fire has been pictured as the effect of smell! Now comes the second stage. The whole incident epitomizes in wonderful way themeaning of fire to mankind. Note the beauty of the comparison of the flame to a lily.
Define: mottled, pluming.
4.With pounding heart Hugh crawled along the height
Why “with pounding heart”?
15.Keen to possess once more the ancient gift.
Of Prometheus to man.
Define: doddering, burgeoning, tenuous.
1.Arose, and made an altar of the place.
Fire worship is as old as the race. Hugh is the priest, the East Wind a religious novice who sings in the ceremonials, the night is the temple, and in response to the worship, “Conjuries of interwoven breath,” the fire god appears in the burning wood.
5.The Wind became a chanting acolyte.
Why have an East Wind?
10.Once more the freightage of the fennel rod
Prometheus used a fennel rod to bring fire to mortals.
11.Dissolved the chilling pall of Jovian scorn.
Jove despised men and refused them fire.
13.The face apocalyptic, and the sword
14.The glory of the many-symboled Lord
17.Voiced with the sound of many waters,
All this is from Revelations, Chapter I.
Define: acolyte, epiphanic.