To Course Across More Kindly Waters Now

Do Not Be Afraid; Our Fate Cannot Be Taken From Us; It Is A Gift.

In The Midway Of This Our Mortal Life, I Found Me In A Gloomy Wood, Astray, Gone From The Path Direct.

In That Part Of The Book Of My Memory Before The Which Is Little That Can Be Read, There Is A Rubric, Saying, Incipit Vita Nova. Under Such Rubric I Find Written Many Things; And Among Them The Words Which I Purpose To Copy Into This Little Book; If Not All Of Them, At The Least Their Substance.

As Flowerlets Drooped And Puckered In The Night Turn Up To The Returning Sun And Spread Their Petals Wide On His New Warmth And Light-just So My Wilted Spirits Rose Again And Such A Heat Of Zeal Surged Through My Veins That I Was Born Anew.

Now You Know How Much My Love For You Burns Deep In Me When I Forget About Our Emptiness, And Deal With Shadows As With Solid Things.