Living Things

excerpt from John Donne's Meditation XVII

  No man is an island, entire of itself; 
  every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. 
  If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, 
    as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, 
    because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.