Sublime

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m the only one here. The two

He’d lost perhaps half an inch in height, and gained perhaps an inch in breadth; but generally speaking the years had glanced off him without damage, and he was as unaltered as Bethesda’s pews.

But Thomas Hart, who still feared death’s sting, was grieving in his pew under the halted moons. Weak light shone on the brass plaque bolted to the coffin: ANNE MARGARET MACAULAY. So that varnished pine contained her flushed cheeks, walking shoes, prudence, preference for Yorkshire tea, shyness, cuttings of African violet, habit of testing the heat

The Golden Guide to Pond Life, The Golden Guide to Stars, to Rocks and Minerals, to Reptiles and Amphibians: humans are almost beside the point.

me. I wanted to be buried. If I must depart this life, I thought, let me live on in the soil: let me feed the earthworms, nourish the roots of the trees, like my mother and her mother before her.

thou art death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun And yet runn'st toward him still.