The unsatisfying and impermanent nature of human so-called life and experience has been the theme of poets, sages, and philosophers throughout the centuries. A Spanish poet wrote of mortal existence:
"What is life? 'Tis but a madness.
What is life? A mere illusion,
Fleeting pleasure, fond delusion,
Short-lived joy, that ends in sadness,
Whose most constant substance seems
But the dream of other dreams."
Long before the day of Calderon, the Hebrew Psalmist wrote: "As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more."
