Morning is here in the joy of its might;
With his breath has he sweetened a night and a day for us;
Now let him pass and the myrtles make way for us;
Love can but last in us here at his height
For a day and a night.
Swinburne (At Parting).
That element of tragedy which lies in the very fact of frequency, has not yet wrought itself into the coarse emotion of mankind; and perhaps our frames could hardly bear much of it. If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence. As it is, the quickest of us walk about well wadded with stupidity.
George Eliot (Middlemarch).