| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Merry Men by Robert Louis Stevenson: find the trace of his preoccupation, praying, as he did, that God
would 'remember in mercy fower puir, feckless, fiddling, sinful
creatures here by their lee-lane beside the great and dowie
waters.'
Soon there came an interchange of speeches between him and Rorie.
'Was it there?' asked my uncle.
'Ou, ay!' said Rorie.
I observed that they both spoke in a manner of aside, and with some
show of embarrassment, and that Mary herself appeared to colour,
and looked down on her plate. Partly to show my knowledge, and so
relieve the party from an awkward strain, partly because I was
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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 Shakespeare's Sonnets by William Shakespeare: 'Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.'
XV
When I consider every thing that grows
Holds in perfection but a little moment,
That this huge stage presenteth nought but shows
Whereon the stars in secret influence comment;
When I perceive that men as plants increase,
Cheered and checked even by the self-same sky,
Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height decrease,
And wear their brave state out of memory;
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay
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