Some of you will perhaps be
surprised — though not those who best understand that nothing is surprising in
the human spirit — when I say that life never seemed so beautiful as it does
now, when to many others it begins to be a burden. May God, who has brought me
to this age, transport me from this vain mortal life to the true eternal life,
as now I prize higher one day of this ripeness than do most young man prize a
year of their bloom…
Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch)
