“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.” —William Shakespeare

In many mansions, humble and sublime,
dwell beings at once sentient and divine.

“People in big empty places are likely to behave very much as the gods did on Olympus.”

―Edna Ferber

In life stories, biographical and apocryphal,
of beings at once down-to-earth and supernal,
hints of divinity are never out of print.

“Happy is he who has gained the wealth of divine thoughts,
wretched is he whose beliefs about the gods are dark.”

―Empedocles

Beings at once temporal and eternal may be,
figuratively, if not also literally,
in promiscuity or sanctity, heaven’s hybrids.

“Humans are amphibians…half spirit and half animal…
as spirits they belong to the eternal world,
but as animals they inhabit time.”

―C.S. Lewis

Heirs to a panoply of deities –
Aphrodite to Zeus; microcosmic to humongous –
beings of the finite and infinite variety,
hybrids of heaven and earth, dwell among us.

“In ancient times cats were worshiped as gods; they have not forgotten this.”

―Terry Pratchett