Embodied longest. If there be indeed
A shore, where mind survives, 'twill be as mind,
All unincorporate or if there flits
A shadow of this cumbrous clog of clay,
Which stalks, methinks, between our souls and heaven, And fetters us to earth-at least the phantom
Whate'er it have to fear, will not fear death.
Byron's Sardanapalus, a. 4, s..1.
Alas! thou art pale, and on thy brow the drops
Gather like night dew. My beloved, hush-
Calm thee. Thy speech seems of another world,
And thou art loved of this. Be of good cheer;
All will go well. Byron's Sardanapalus, a. 4, s. 1.
Since I heard
Of death, although I know not what it is,
Yet it seems horrible. I have look'd out
In the vast desolate night in search of him;
And when I saw gigantic shadows in
The umbrage of the walls of Eden, chequer'd
By the far-fashing of the cherub's swords,
I watch'd for what I thought his coming; for
With fear rose longing in my heart to know
What 'twas which shook us all-but nothing came.
And then I turn'd my weary eyes from off
Our native and forbidden Paradise,
Up to the lights above us, in the azure,
Which are so beautiful: shall they, too, die?
Byron's Cain, a. 1, s. 1.
But live to die and living, see nothing
To make death hateful, save an innate clinging,
A loathsome and yet all invincible
Instinct of life, which I abhor, as I
Despise myself, yet cannot overcome
And so I live. Would I had never lived!
That must end us, that must be our cure,
To be no more; sad cure; for who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion.
Milton's Paradise Lost, b. 2.
The other shape,
If shape it might be call'd that shape had none
Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb,
Or substance might be call'd that shadow seem'd,
For each seem'd either; black it stood as night,
Fierce as ten furies, terrible as hell,
And shook a dreadful dart; what seem'd his head
The likeness of a kingly crown had on.
Grinn'd horrible a ghastly smile, to hear
His famine should be fill'd, and blest his maw
Destin'd to that good hour.
Why am I mock'd with death, and lengthen'd out
To deathless pain? how gladly would I meet
Mortality my sentence, and be earth
Insensible, how glad would lay me down
As in my mother's lap! there I should rest
And sleep secure.
Dire was the tossing, deep the groans; despair
Tended the sick busiest from couch to couch;
And over them triumphant death his dart
Shook, but delay'd to strike, though oft invok'd
With vows, as their chief good, and final hope.
Grim death in different shapes
Depopulates the nations; thousands fall
His victims; youths, and virgins, in their flower,
Reluctant die, and sighing leave their loves
Unfinish'd, by infectious heaven destroy'd.
Philip's Cider, b. 1.
Will toys amuse, when med'cines cannot cure?
When spirits ebb, when life's enchanting scenes
Their lustre lose, and lessen in our sight,
As lands, and cities, with their glittering spires,
To the poor shatter'd bark, by sudden storm
Thrown off to sea, and soon to perish there?
Will toys amuse? No: thrones will then be toys,
And earth and skies seem dust upon the scale.
Young's Night Thoughts, n. 2.
Each friend by fate snatch'd from us, is a plume
Pluckt from the wing of human vanity,
Which makes us stoop from our aerial heights,
And, dampt with omen of our own disease,
On drooping pinions of ambition lower'd,
Just skim earth's surface, ere we break it up,
O'er putrid earth to scratch a little dust,
And save the world a nuisance.
Death is the crown of life:
Were death deny'd, poor men would live in vain ;
Were death deny'd, to live would not be life;
Were death deny'd, ev'n fools would wish to die. Ibid.
Why start at death? Where is he? Death arriv'd,
Is past; not come, or gone, he's never here.
Ere hope, sensation fails; black-boding man
Receives, not suffers, death's tremendous blow.
The knell, the shroud, the mattock, and the grave;
The deep damp vault, the darkness, and the worm;
These are the bugbears of a winter's eve,
The terrors of the living, not the dead.
Imagination's fool, and error's wretch,
Man makes a death, which nature never made;
Then on the point of his own fancy falls;
And feels a thousand deaths, in fearing one.
Young's Night Thoughts, n. 4. Early, bright, transient, chaste as morning dew, She sparkled, was exhal'd, and went to heaven.
Like other tyrants, death delights to smite,
What, smitten, most proclaims the pride of pow'r,
And arbitrary nod. His joy supreme,
To bid the wretch survive the fortunate;
The feeble wrap the athletic in his shroud;
And weeping fathers build their children's tomb.Ibid.
Death leads the dance, or stamps the deadly die;
Nor ever fails the midnight bowl to crown.
Gaily carousing to his gay compeers,
Inly he laughs, to see them laugh at him,
As absent far: and when the revel burns,
When fear is banish'd, and triumphant thought,
Calling for all the joys beneath the moon,
Against him turns the key; and bids him sup
With their progenitors, he drops his mask;
Frowns out at full; they start, despair, expire. Ibid.
That man greatly lives,
Whate'er his fate, or fame, who greatly dies;
High flush'd with hope, where heroes shall despair.
Where the prime actors of the last year's scene;
Their port so proud, their buskin, and their plume?
How many sleep, who kept the world awake
With lustre and with noise!
When down thy vale, unlock'd by midnight thought,
That loves to wander in thy sunless realms,
O death! I stretch my view; what visions rise!
What triumphs! toils imperial! arts divine!
In wither'd laurels glide before my sight!
What lengths of far-famed ages, billow'd high
With human agitation, roll along
In unsubstantial images of air!
The melancholy ghosts of dead renown,
Whispering faint echoes of the world's applause :
With penitential aspect, as they pass,
All point at earth, and hiss at human pride,
The wisdom of the wise, and prancings of the great.
Young's Night Thoughts, n. 9.
That hour, O long belov'd and long deplor'd!
When blooming youth, nor gentlest wisdom's arts,
Nor Hymen's honours gather'd for thy brow,
Nor all thy lover's, all thy father's tears
Avail'd to snatch thee from the cruel grave;
Thy agonizing looks, thy last farewell,
Struck to the inmost feeling of my soul
As with the hand of death.
Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination, b. 2.
How shocking must thy summons be, O death!
To him that is at ease in his possessions;
Who, counting on long years of pleasure here,
Is quite unfurnish'd for that world to come!
In that dread moment, how the frantic soul
Raves round the walls of her clay tenement,
Runs to each avenue, and shrieks for help,
But shrieks in vain!
Sure 'tis a serious thing to die, my soul!
What a strange moment must it be, when near
Thy journey's end thou hast the gulf in view!
That awful gulph no mortal e'er repass'd,
To tell what's doing on the other side!
Nature runs back and shudders at the sight,
And every life-string bleeds at thoughts of parting.
Ibid.
Death's shafts fly thick! Here falls the village swain,
And there his pamper'd lord! The cup goes round,
And who so artful as to put it by!
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