The Upward Look by Boethius

In what divers shapes and fashions do the creatures great and small
Over wide earth’s teeming surface skim, or scud, or walk, or crawl!
Some with elongated body sweep the ground, and , as they move,
Trail perforce with writhing belly in the dust a sinuous groove;
Some, on light wing upward soaring, swiftly do the winds divide,
And through heaven’s ample spaces in free motion smoothly glide;
These earth’s solid surface pressing, with firm paces onward rove,
Ranging through the verdant meadows, crouching in the woodland grove.
Great and wondrous is their variance! Yet in all the head low-bent
Dulls the soul and blunts the senses, though their forms be different.
Man alone, erect, aspiring, lifts his forehead to the skies,
And in upright posture steadfast seems earth’s baseness to despise.
If with earth not all besotted, to this parable give ear,
Thou whose gaze is fixed on heaven, who thy face on high dost rear:
Lift they soul, too, heavenward; haply lest it stain its heavenly7 worth,
And thine eyes alone look upward, while they mind cleaves to the earth!

What with the insanity of news daily delivered to us mortals, how fitting we should “gaze”… “upward.”