O lady! we receive but what we give And in our life alone does Nature live.

I see, not feel, how beautiful you are!

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the earth.

And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.

Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.

Is life worth living? Yes, so long As Spring revives the year, And hails us with the cuckoo's song, To show that she is here;

The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, th…