and red--
Look up, look up--I flutter now
On this flush pomegranate bough.
See me! 'tis this silvery bill
Ever cures the good man's ill.
Shed no tear! O shed no tear!
The flowers will bloom another year.
Adieu, adieu--I fly, adieu,
I vanish in the heaven's blue--
Adieu, adieu!

_John Keats._

PRAISE THE GENEROUS GODS FOR GIVING

Some of us find joy in toil, some in art, some in the open air and the
sunshine. All of us find it in simply being alive. Life is the gift no
creature in his right mind would part with. As Milton asks,

"For who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
These thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion?"

Praise the generous gods for giving
In a world of wrath and strife,
With a little time for living,
Unto all the joy of life.

At whatever source we drink it,
Art or love or faith or wine,
In whatever terms we think it,
It is common and divine.

Praise the high gods, for in giving
This to man, and this alone,
They have made his chance of living
Shine the equal of their own.

_William Ernest Henley._

COWARDS

We might as well accept the inevitable as the inevitable. There is no
escaping death or taxes.

Cowards die many times before their deaths:
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come, when it will come.

_William Shakespeare._

THE WORD

The Cumaean sibyl offered Tarquin the Proud nine books for what seemed
an exorbitant sum. He refused. She burned three of the books, and placed
the same price on the six as on the original nine. Again he refused. She
burned three more books, and offered the remainder for the sum she first
named. This time Tarquin accepted. The books were found to contain
prophecies and invaluable directions regarding Roman policy, but alas,
they were no longer complete. So it is with joy. To take it now is to
get it in its entirety. To defer until some other occasion is to get
less of it--at the same cost.

Today, whatever may annoy,
The word for it is Joy, just simple joy:
The joy of life;
The joy of children and of wife;
The joy of bright blue skies;
The joy o