His religion, at best, is an anxious wish; like that of Rabelais, "a great Perhaps."
Qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
Illuc unde negant redire quemquam.
Who now travels that dark path from whose
bourne they say no one returns.
Soles occidere et redire possunt;
Nobis cum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.
Suns may set and rise; we, when our short
day has closed, must sleep on during one neverending night.
When death hath poured oblivion through my
veins,
And brought me home, as all are brought, to lie
In that vast house, common to serfs and
thanes,—
I shall not die, I shall not utterly die,
For beauty born of beauty—that remains.
"For all that let me tell thee, brother Panza," said Don Quixote, "that there is no recollection which time does not put an end to, and no pain which death does not remove."
"And what greater misfortune can there be," replied Panza, "than the one that waits for time to put an end to it and death to remove it?"
It singeth low in every heart,
We hear it each and all,—
A song of those who answer not,
However we may call;
They throng the silence of the breast,
We see them as of yore,—
The kind, the brave, the true, the sweet,
Who walk with us no more.
At length, fatigued with life, he bravely fell,
And health with Boerhaave bade the world farewell.
Ex vita discedo, tanquam ex hospitio, non tanquam ex domo.
I depart from life as from an inn, and not as from my home.
Ernori nolo: sed me esse mortuum nihil aistimo.
I do not wish to die: but I care not if I were dead.
Vetat dominans ille in nobis deus, injussu hinc nos suo demigrare.
The divinity who rules within us, forbids us to leave this world without his command.
Undique enim ad inferos tantundem viae est.
There are countless roads on all sides to the grave.
Supremus ille dies non nostri extinctionem sed commutationem affert loci.
That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.
Some men make a womanish complaint that it is a great misfortune to die before our time. I would ask what time? Is it that of Nature? But she, indeed, has lent us life, as we do a sum of money, only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason then to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition that you received it.
Omnia mors sequat.
Death levels all things.
Mors dominos servis etsceptraligonibus sequat,
Dissimiles simili conditione trahens.
Death levels master and slave, the sceptre and the law and makes the unlike like.
Mors sceptra ligonibus sequat.
in the 12th Century Vers sur la Mort. Ascribed to Thibaut de Marly. Also the motto
of one of Symeoni's emblematic devices. See Notes and Queries, May, 1917. P. 134.
Death comes with a crawl or he comes with a
pounce,
And whether he's slow, or spry.
It isn't the fact that you're dead that counts,
But only, how did you die?
Qui ne craint point la mort ne craint point les menaces.
He who does not fear death cares naught for threats.
O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where
is thy victory?
Ut non ex vita, sed ex domo in domum videretur migrare.
So that he seemed to depart not from life, but from one home to another.
All flesh is grass, and all its glory fades
Like the fair flower dishevell'd in the wind;
Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream;
The man we celebrate must find a tomb,
And we that worship him, ignoble graves.
