the sudden coming of death will admonish me of nothing new. (a) We must be always booted and ready to depart, so far as lies in us, and, above all, look to it that we have no business then except with ourselves.
(b) Quid brevi fortes jaculamur ævo
Multa?[1]
(c) For we shall have enough work then without surplusage. One man bewails, more than for death itself, that it breaks off the progress of a glorious victory; another, that he must leave his lodging before he has married his daughter or arranged for the education of his children. One deplores the loss of the company of his wife, another of that of his son, as chief pleasures of his existence. (c) I am at this hour in such a state, God be praised, that I can dislodge whenever it may please him, without regret for anything whatsoever, if it be not for life itself, if its loss begins to be important to me.[2] I am untying myself from all things; my farewells are now said to every one save myself. Never did man prepare to leave this world more wholly and entirely, or to detach himself from it more completely, than I endeavour to do.[3]
(b) Miser, o miser, aiunt, omnia ademit
Una dies infesta mihi tot præmia vitæ.[4]
(a) And the builder: —
Manent [he says] opera interrupta minæque
Murorum ingentes.[5]
We must not plan any thing requiring so long a breath, or, at
- ↑ Why, in so short a life, make so many plans? — Horace, Odes, II, 16.17.
- ↑ The last words, from “if it be not,” are found only in the Édition Municipale.
- ↑ The edition of 1595 adds: Les plus mortes morts sont les plus saines. (The deadest deaths are the most healthful.) This puzzling sentence is not found in the Édition Municipale.
- ↑ “Qh, wretched, wretched man that I am!” they say; “one hostile day has taken everything from me — all that life has won.” — Lucretius, III, 898. The usual reading is misero misere aiunt.
- ↑ The works remain broken off, and the great walls of threatening height. — Virgil, Æneid, IV, 88. The original has pendent instead of manent.
