| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Virginibus Puerisque by Robert Louis Stevenson: the air shifts into a minor, and death makes a clutch from his
ambuscade below the bed of marriage. For death is given in a
kiss; the dearest kindnesses are fatal; and into this life,
where one thing preys upon another, the child too often makes
its entrance from the mother's corpse. It is no wonder, with
so traitorous a scheme of things, if the wise people who
created for us the idea of Pan thought that of all fears the
fear of him was the most terrible, since it embraces all. And
still we preserve the phrase: a panic terror. To reckon
dangers too curiously, to hearken too intently for the threat
that runs through all the winning music of the world, to hold
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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 Enoch Arden, &c. by Alfred Tennyson: Enoch, your husband: I have ever said
You chose the best among us--a strong man:
For where he fixt his heart he set his hand
To do the thing he will'd, and bore it thro'.
And wherefore did he go this weary way,
And leave you lonely? not to see the world--
For pleasure?--nay, but for the wherewithal
To give his babes a better bringing-up
Than his had been, or yours: that was his wish.
And if he come again, vext will he be
To find the precious morning hours were lost.
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