"Life is so inordinately beautiful that it’s beauty is its burden: a burden we often mistake as sadness. Scratch a sadness and you will see the ineffable magnificence lurking inside."

Transformations

Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew
Bosomed here at it’s foot:
This branch may be his wife
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot

These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose
So, they are not underground
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!
-poem by Thomas Hardy