And malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to man.

His folly has not fellow Beneath the blue of day That gives to man or woman His heart and soul away.

The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.

When the journey's over/There'll be time enough to sleep.

The troubles of our proud and angry dust are from eternity, and shall not fail. Bear them we can, and if we can we must. Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

Give me a land of boughs in leaf A land of trees that stand; Where trees are fallen there is grief; I love no leafless land.

I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.