Backward and forward rolled the waves of fight
Round Troy; but while this stood, Troy could not fall.
So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul.
Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air;
Cold plashing, past it crystal waters roll;
We visit it by moments, ah! too rare.
Men will renew the battle in the plain
To-morrow; red with blood will Xanthus be;
Hector and Ajax will be there again;
Helen will come upon the wall to see.
Then we shall rust in shade, or shine in strife,
And fluctuate ’tween blind hopes and blind despairs,
And fancy that we put forth all our life,
And never know how with the soul it fares.
Still doth the soul, from its lone fastness high,
Upon our life a ruling effluence send;
And when it fails, fight as we will, we die;
And while it lasts, we cannot wholly end.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Death
Come, lovely and soothing Death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later, delicate Death.
Praised be the fathomless universe
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious;
And for love, sweet love—But praise! O praise and praise
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding Death.
Dark Mother, always gliding near, with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee—I glorify thee above all;
I bring thee a song, that, when thou must indeed come, thou come unfalteringly.
Approach, encompassing Death—strong deliveress!
When it is so—when thou hast taken them, I joyously sing the dead
Lost in the loving, floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O Death.
WALT WHITMAN.
Death is before me to-day,
Like the recovery of a sick man,
Like going forth into a garden after sickness;
Death is before me to-day,
Like the odour of myrrh,
Like sitting under the sail on a windy day;
Death is before me to-day,
Like the odour of lotus flowers,
Like sitting on the shore of drunkenness;
Death is before me to-day,
Like the course of the freshet,
Like the return of a man from the war-galley to his house,
When he has spent years in captivity.
EGYPTIAN POEM.
Accustom thyself to the thought that death is nothing in relation to us; for good and evil consist in our perception of them, and death is the deprivation of all perception. Hence the right understanding of this truth that death is nothing to us makes us capable of enjoying this mortal life, not in setting before ourselves the prospect of an endless time, but in taking away from us the longing for immortality. For there is nothing terrible in life for him who has truly grasped that there is nothing in the beyond life. Therefore he is foolish who says that death should be feared, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because it is painful to look forward to; for it is vain to be grieved in anticipation of that which distresses us not when present. Thus, that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we no more exist. Death, then, is neither for the living nor the dead, since it does not exist for the former and the latter are no more.
EPICURUS.
Oh, for the time when I shall sleep
Without identity,
And never care how rain may steep,
Or snow may cover me!
No promised heaven these wild desires
Could all, or half, fulfil;
No threatened hell, with quenchless fires,
Subdue this quenchless will!
So say I, and still say the same;
Still, to my death, will say—
Three gods within this little frame
Are warring night and day;
Heaven could not hold them all, and yet
They all are held in me,
And must be mine, till I forget
My present entity!
Oh, for the time, when in my breast
Their struggles will be o’er!
Oh, for the day, when I shall rest,
And never suffer more!
EMILY BRONTË.
Since Nature’s works be good, and death doth serve
As Nature’s work, why should we fear to die?
Since fear is vain, but when it may preserve,
Why should we fear that which we cannot fly?
Fear is more pain than is the pain it fears,
Disarming human minds of native might;
While each conceit an ugly figure bears,
Which were not evil, well viewed in reason’s light.
Our owly eyes, which dimmed with passions be,
And scarce discern the dawn of coming day,
Let them be cleared, and now begin to see
Our life is but a step in dusty way.
Then let us hold the bliss of peaceful mind;
Since this we feel, great loss we cannot find.
SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.
Non è viltà, ne da viltà procede
S’alcun, per evitar piu crudel sorte,
Odia la propria vita e cerca morte,
Se senza alcun rimedio il suo mal vede.
Ma bene è vil chi senza affanno crede
Travagliar manco in vita, e si conforte
Dicendo: io vivo. Ah menti poco accorte,
Che hanno in fedel morte poco fede!
Meglio è morire all’animo gentile
Che sopportar inevitabil danno
Che lo farria cambiar animo e stile.
Quanti ha la morte già tratti d’affanno!
Ma molti ch’hanno il chiamar morte a vile,
Quanto talor sia dolce ancor non sanno.
GIULIANO DE’ MEDICI.
Stile—it is for that word that I like the sonnet. For the man of the Renaissance, even suicide is a matter of style. Living is a process of creation. Every life is a work of art and every spirit has its own distinguishing style, good or, more often, alas, indifferent or downright bad. Some people exist Miltonically and some Wilcoxically; some in the style of Figaro, others in that of The Merry Widow. The noble soul is born and bred to live the equivalent of a Piero della Francesca fresco or a statue by Donatello. But, like every other art, the art of life can be practised well only when external circumstances are tolerably propitious. If circumstances change so much for the worse that the grand manner must be abandoned, then—for this particular noble spirit, at any rate—there is no alternative but suicide. Rather death than a style debased and made vulgar.
Conclusions
Was it a dream? We sailed, I thought we sailed,
Martin and I, down a green Alpine stream,
Bordered, each bank, with pines; the morning sun,
On the wet umbrage of their glossy tops,
On the red pinings of their forest floor,
Drew a warm scent abroad; behind the pines
The mountain skirts, with all their sylvan change
Of bright-leafed chestnuts and mossed walnut trees
And the frail scarlet-berried ash, began.
Swiss chalets glittered on the dewy slopes,
And from some swarded shelf, high up, there came
Notes of wild pastoral music—over all
Ranged, diamond-bright, the eternal wall of snow.
Upon the mossy rocks at the stream’s edge,
Backed by the pines, a plank-built cottage stood,
Bright in the sun; the climbing gourd-plant’s leaves
Muffled its walls, and on the stone-strewn roof
Lay the warm golden gourds; golden, within,
Under the eaves, peered rows of Indian corn.
We shot beneath the cottage with the stream.
On the brown, rude-carved balcony, two forms
Came forth—Olivia’s, Marguerite! and thine.
Clad were they both in white, flowers in their breast;
Straw hats bedecked their heads, with ribbons blue,
Which danced and on their shoulders, fluttering, played.
They saw us, they conferred; their bosoms heaved,
And more than mortal impulse filled their eyes.
Their lips moved; their white arms, waved eagerly,
Flashed once, like falling streams; we rose, we gazed.
One moment on the rapid’s top our boat
Hung poised—and then the darting river of Life
(Such now, methought, it was) the river of Life,
Loud thundering bore us by; swift, swift it foamed,
Black under cliffs it raced, round headlands shone.
Soon the planked cottage by the sun-warmed pines
Faded—the moss—the rocks; us burning plains,
Bristled with cities, us the sea received.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Pour l’enfant amoureux de cartes et d’estampes,
L’univers est égal à son vaste appétit.
Ah, que le monde est grand à la clarté des lampes!
Aux yeux du souvenir que le monde est petit!
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE.
Enough, we live!—and if a life,
With large results so little rife,
Though bearable, seem hardly worth
This pomp of worlds, this pain of birth;
Yet, Fausta, the mute turf we tread,
The solemn hills around us spread,
This stream which falls incessantly,
The strange-scrawled rocks, the lonely sky,
If I might lend their life a voice,
Seem to bear rather than rejoice.
And even could the intemperate prayer
Man iterates, while these forbear,
For movement, for an ampler sphere.
Pierce Fate’s impenetrable ear;
Not milder is the general lot
Because our spirits have forgot,
In action’s dizzying eddy whirled,
The something that infects the world.
MATTHEW ARNOLD.
Here, in this little Bay,
Full of tumultuous life and great repose,
Where, twice a day,
The purposeless glad ocean comes and goes,
Under high cliffs and far from the huge town,
I sit me down.
For want of me the world’s course will not fail;
When all its work is done, the lie shall rot;
The truth is great and shall prevail,
When none cares whether it prevail or not.
COVENTRY PATMORE.
Timber
Sure thou didst flourish once! and many springs,
Many bright mornings, much dew, many showers
Passed o’er thy head: many light hearts and wings,
Which now are dead, lodged in thy living bowers.
And still a new succession sings and flies;
Fresh groves grow up and their green branches shoot,
Towards the old and still enduring skies,
While the low violet thrives at their root.
HENRY VAUGHAN.
The thought that the world persists and, like the Jolly Miller of the song, cares for nobody, is sometimes profoundly consoling, sometimes a kind of derisive insult. It depends upon circumstances and our mood. Anyhow, the fact remains.
If dead we cease to be, if total gloom
Swallow up life’s brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being. If the breath
Be life itself, and not its task and tent,
If even a soul like Milton’s can know death;
O man, thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes!
Surplus of nature’s dread activity,
Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase
Retreating slow, with meditative pause,
She formed with restless hands unconsciously!
Blank accident! nothing’s anomaly!
If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,
The counter weights! Thy laughter
