第29章

Then, again, Whatever abides eternal must indeed Either repel all strokes, because 'tis made Of solid body, and permit no entrance Of aught with power to sunder from within The parts compact- as are those seeds of stuff Whose nature we've exhibited before;Or else be able to endure through time For this: because they are from blows exempt, As is the void, the which abides untouched, Unsmit by any stroke; or else because There is no room around, whereto things can, As 'twere, depart in dissolution all,-Even as the sum of sums eternal is, Without or place beyond whereto things may Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite, And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.

But if perchance the soul's to be adjudged Immortal, mainly on ground 'tis kept secure In vital forces- either because there come Never at all things hostile to its weal, Or else because what come somehow retire, Repelled or ere we feel the harm they work,......

For, lo, besides that, when the frame's diseased, Soul sickens too, there cometh, many a time, That which torments it with the things to be, Keeps it in dread, and wearies it with cares;And even when evil acts are of the past, Still gnaw the old transgressions bitterly.

Add, too, that frenzy, peculiar to the mind, And that oblivion of the things that were;Add its submergence in the murky waves Of drowse and torpor.

FOLLY OF THE FEAR OF DEATH

Therefore death to us Is nothing, nor concerns us in the least, Since nature of mind is mortal evermore.

And just as in the ages gone before We felt no touch of ill, when all sides round To battle came the Carthaginian host, And the times, shaken by tumultuous war, Under the aery coasts of arching heaven Shuddered and trembled, and all humankind Doubted to which the empery should fall By land and sea, thus when we are no more, When comes that sundering of our body and soul Through which we're fashioned to a single state, Verily naught to us, us then no more, Can come to pass, naught move our senses then-No, not if earth confounded were with sea, And sea with heaven.But if indeed do feel The nature of mind and energy of soul, After their severance from this body of ours, Yet nothing 'tis to us who in the bonds And wedlock of the soul and body live, Through which we're fashioned to a single state.

And, even if time collected after death The matter of our frames and set it all Again in place as now, and if again To us the light of life were given, O yet That process too would not concern us aught, When once the self-succession of our sense Has been asunder broken.And now and here, Little enough we're busied with the selves We were aforetime, nor, concerning them, Suffer a sore distress.For shouldst thou gaze Backwards across all yesterdays of time The immeasurable, thinking how manifold The motions of matter are, then couldst thou well Credit this too: often these very seeds (From which we are to-day) of old were set In the same order as they are to-day-Yet this we can't to consciousness recall Through the remembering mind.For there hath been An interposed pause of life, and wide Have all the motions wandered everywhere From these our senses.For if woe and ail Perchance are toward, then the man to whom The bane can happen must himself be there At that same time.But death precludeth this, Forbidding life to him on whom might crowd Such irk and care; and granted 'tis to know:

Nothing for us there is to dread in death, No wretchedness for him who is no more, The same estate as if ne'er born before, When death immortal hath ta'en the mortal life.

Hence, where thou seest a man to grieve because When dead he rots with body laid away, Or perishes in flames or jaws of beasts, Know well: he rings not true, and that beneath Still works an unseen sting upon his heart, However he deny that he believes.

His shall be aught of feeling after death.

For he, I fancy, grants not what he says, Nor what that presupposes, and he fails To pluck himself with all his roots from life And cast that self away, quite unawares Feigning that some remainder's left behind.

For when in life one pictures to oneself His body dead by beasts and vultures torn, He pities his state, dividing not himself Therefrom, removing not the self enough From the body flung away, imagining Himself that body, and projecting there His own sense, as he stands beside it: hence He grieves that he is mortal born, nor marks That in true death there is no second self Alive and able to sorrow for self destroyed, Or stand lamenting that the self lies there Mangled or burning.For if it an evil is Dead to be jerked about by jaw and fang Of the wild brutes, I see not why 'twere not Bitter to lie on fires and roast in flames, Or suffocate in honey, and, reclined On the smooth oblong of an icy slab, Grow stiff in cold, or sink with load of earth Down-crushing from above.

"Thee now no more The joyful house and best of wives shall welcome, Nor little sons run up to snatch their kisses And touch with silent happiness thy heart.

Thou shalt not speed in undertakings more, Nor be the warder of thine own no more.

Poor wretch," they say, "one hostile hour hath ta'en Wretchedly from thee all life's many guerdons,"But add not, "yet no longer unto thee Remains a remnant of desire for them"If this they only well perceived with mind And followed up with maxims, they would free Their state of man from anguish and from fear.

"O even as here thou art, aslumber in death, So shalt thou slumber down the rest of time, Released from every harrying pang.But we, We have bewept thee with insatiate woe, Standing beside whilst on the awful pyre Thou wert made ashes; and no day shall take For us the eternal sorrow from the breast."But ask the mourner what's the bitterness That man should waste in an eternal grief, If, after all, the thing's but sleep and rest?

For when the soul and frame together are sunk In slumber, no one then demands his self Or being.Well, this sleep may be forever, Without desire of any selfhood more, For all it matters unto us asleep.