I’ve been reading John Ruskin’s book Precious Thoughts and just love so much of it. In a chapter titled The Earth Veil he describes how God prepared the surface of the earth for the welfare of man, contrasted to the depths of the earth that are inanimate and passive for the most part. Here he contrasts the two, and his description of the surface of the earth is so poetic.

 "The earth in its depths must remain dead and cold, incapable except of slow crystalline change; but at its surface, which human beings look upon and deal with, it ministers to them throughout a veil of strange intermediate being; which breathes, but has no voice; moves, but cannot leave its appointed place; passes through life without consciousness, to death without bitterness; wears the beauty of youth without its passion; and declines to the weakness of age, without its regret."