Here is my somewhat belated connection between Abrams' four key elements with The Idea of Order at Key West.

She sang beyond the genuis of the sea.

The water never formed to mind or voice,

Like a body, wholly body, fluttering

Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion

Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,

That was not ours although we understood,

Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

In this first part we find the elements of the world(the sea), and the idea of mimesis which the ancient world thought so vital. But we also have the artist, who is able to create something that exists seperately from the natural world. And then there is also the first introduction of "we", the audience watching the girl singing by the sea.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.

The song and water were not medleyed sound

Even if what she sang was what she heard,

Since what she sang was uttered word by word.

It may be that in all her phrases stirred

The grinding water and the gasping wind;

But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.

The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea

Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.

Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew

It was the spirit that we sought and knew

That we should ask this often as she sang.

And in these two stanzas we see further emphasis upon the Artist, and the Artist's work(a song or text) upon the audience. So throughout this poem--I don't think I will comment upon the last couple stanzas right now simply because I am congenitally lazy-- we have all of Abrams' artistic approaches dealt with: the mimetic, the pragmantic, the expressive and the objective(this last is perhaps the most elusive and yet the most integral).

I must also make a note that we are to link this poem to Frye's anagical phase of the theory of symbols by sometime next week.

And I have recieved further evidence today of why I must read Frankenstein and watch Au Hasard Balthazar. Occaisonally I feel overcome by panic thinking of all the books I haven't read and all the films I haven't seen. Then I remeber to relax, and remeber that I will get there eventtually. Unless of course the censor-people who don't read get their way and make this an impossibilty...