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        Book III

      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.
       Yet not at all do those primordial germs
       Roam round our members, at that time, afar
       From their own motions that produce our senses-
       Since, when he's startled from his sleep, a man
       Collects his senses. Death is, then, to us
       Much less- if there can be a less than that
       Which is itself a nothing: for there comes
       Hard upon death a scattering more great
       Of the throng of matter, and no man wakes up
       On whom once falls the icy pause of life.
       This too, O often from the soul men say,
       Along their couches holding of the cups,
       With faces shaded by fresh wreaths awry:
       "Brief is this fruit of joy to paltry man,
       Soon, soon departed, and thereafter, no,
       It may not be recalled."- As if, forsooth,
       It were their prime of evils in great death
       To parch, poor tongues, with thirst and arid drought,
       Or chafe for any lack.
       Once more, if Nature
       Should of a sudden send a voice abroad,
       And her own self inveigh against us so:
       "Mortal, what hast thou of such grave concern
       That thou indulgest in too sickly plaints?
       Why this bemoaning and beweeping death?
       For if thy life aforetime and behind
       To thee was grateful, and not all thy good
       Was heaped as in sieve to flow away
       And perish unavailingly, why not,
       Even like a banqueter, depart the halls,
       Laden with life? why not with mind content
       Take now, thou fool, thy unafflicted rest?
       But if whatever thou enjoyed hath been
       Lavished and lost, and life is now offence,
       Why seekest more to add- which in its turn
       Will perish foully and fall out in vain?
       O why not rather make an end of life,
       Of labour? For all I may devise or find
       To pleasure thee is nothing: all things are
       The same forever. Though not yet thy body
       Wrinkles with years, nor yet the frame exhausts
       Outworn, still things abide the same, even if
       Thou goest on to conquer all of time
       With length of days, yea, if thou never diest"-
       What were our answer, but that Nature here
       Urges just suit and in her words lays down
       True cause of action? Yet should one complain,
       Riper in years and elder, and lament,
       Poor devil, his death more sorely than is fit,
       Then would she not, with greater right, on him
       Cry out, inveighing with a voice more shrill:
       "Off with thy tears, and choke thy whines, buffoon!
       Thou wrinklest- after thou hast had the sum
       Of the guerdons of life; yet, since thou cravest ever
       What's not at hand, contemning present good,
       That life has slipped away, unperfected
       And unavailing unto thee. And now,
       Or ere thou guessed it, death beside thy head
       Stands- and before thou canst be going home
       Sated and laden with the goodly feast.
       But now yield all that's alien to thine age,-
       Up, with good grace! make room for sons: thou must."
       Justly, I fancy, would she reason thus,
       Justly inveigh and gird: since ever the old
       Outcrowded by the new gives way, and ever
       The one thing from the others is repaired.
       Nor no man is consigned to the abyss
       Of Tartarus, the black. For stuff must be,
       That thus the after-generations grow,-
       Though these, their life completed, follow thee;
       And thus like thee are generations all-
       Already fallen, or some time to fall.
       So one thing from another rises ever;
       And in fee-simple life is given to none,
       But unto all mere usufruct.
       Look back:
       Nothing to us was all fore-passed eld
       Of time the eternal, ere we had a birth.
       And Nature holds this like a mirror up
       Of time-to-be when we are dead and gone.
       And what is there so horrible appears?
       Now what is there so sad about it all?
       Is't not serener far than any sleep?
       And, verily, those tortures said to be
       In Acheron, the deep, they all are ours
       Here in this life. No Tantalus, benumbed
       With baseless terror, as the fables tell,
       Fears the huge boulder hanging in the air:
       But, rather, in life an empty dread of gods
       Urges mortality, and each one fears
       Such fall of fortune as may chance to him.
       Nor eat the vultures into Tityus
       Prostrate in Acheron, nor can they find,
       Forsooth, throughout eternal ages, aught
       To pry around for in that mighty breast.
       However hugely he extend his bulk-
       Who hath for outspread limbs not acres nine,
       But the whole earth- he shall not able be
       To bear eternal pain nor furnish food
       From his own frame forever. But for us
       A Tityus is he whom vultures rend
       Prostrate in love, whom anxious anguish eats,
       Whom troubles of any unappeased desires
       Asunder rip. We have before our eyes
       Here in this life also a Sisyphus
       In him who seeketh of the populace
       The rods, the axes fell, and evermore
       Retires a beaten and a gloomy man.
       For to seek after power- an empty name,
       Nor given at all- and ever in the search
       To endure a world of toil, O this it is
       To shove with shoulder up the hill a stone
       Which yet comes rolling back from off the top,
       And headlong makes for levels of the plain.
       Then to be always feeding an ingrate mind,
       Filling with good things, satisfying never-
       As do the seasons of the year for us,
       When they return and bring their progenies
       And varied charms, and we are never filled
       With the fruits of life- O this, I fancy, 'tis
       To pour, like those young virgins in the tale,
       Waters into a sieve, unfilled forever.

       Cerberus and Furies, and that Lack of Light

       Tartarus, out-belching from his mouth the surge
       Of horrible heat- the which are nowhere, nor
       Indeed can be: but in this life is fear
       Of retributions just and expiations
       For evil acts: the dungeon and the leap
       From that dread rock of infamy, the stripes,
       The executioners, the oaken rack,
       The iron plates, bitumen, and the torch.
       And even though these are absent, yet the mind,
       With a fore-fearing conscience, plies its goads
       And burns beneath the lash, nor sees meanwhile
       What terminus of ills, what end of pine
       Can ever be, and feareth lest the same
       But grow more heavy after death. Of truth,
       The life of fools is Acheron on earth.
       This also to thy very self sometimes
       Repeat thou mayst: "Lo, even good Ancus left
       The sunshine with his eyes, in divers things
       A better man than thou, O worthless hind;
       And many other kings and lords of rule
       Thereafter have gone under, once who swayed
       O'er mighty peoples. And he also, he-
       Who whilom paved a highway down the sea,
       And gave his legionaries thoroughfare
       Along the deep, and taught them how to cross
       The pools of brine afoot, and did contemn,
       Trampling upon it with his cavalry,
       The bellowings of ocean- poured his soul
       From dying body, as his light was ta'en.
       And Scipio's son, the thunderbolt of war,
       Horror of Carthage, gave his bones to earth,
       Like to the lowliest villein in the house.
       Add finders-out of sciences and arts;
       Add comrades of the Heliconian dames,
       Among whom Homer, sceptered o'er them all
       Now lies in slumber sunken with the rest.
       Then, too, Democritus, when ripened eld
       Admonished him his memory waned away,
       Of own accord offered his head to death.
       Even Epicurus went, his light of life
       Run out, the man in genius who o'er-topped
       The human race, extinguishing all others,
       As sun, in ether arisen, all the stars.
       Wilt thou, then, dally, thou complain to go?-
       For whom already life's as good as dead,
       Whilst yet thou livest and lookest?- who in sleep
       Wastest thy life- time's major part, and snorest
       Even when awake, and ceasest not to see
       The stuff of dreams, and bearest a mind beset
       By baseless terror, nor discoverest oft
       What's wrong with thee, when, like a sotted wretch,
       Thou'rt jostled along by many crowding cares,
       And wanderest reeling round, with mind aswim."
       If men, in that same way as on the mind
       They feel the load that wearies with its weight,
       Could also know the causes whence it comes,
       And why so great the heap of ill on heart,
       O not in this sort would they live their life,
       As now so much we see them, knowing not
       What 'tis they want, and seeking ever and ever
       A change of place, as if to drop the burden.
       The man who sickens of his home goes out,
       Forth from his splendid halls, and straight- returns,
       Feeling i'faith no better off abroad.
       He races, driving his Gallic ponies along,
       Down to his villa, madly,- as in haste
       To hurry help to a house afire.- At once
       He yawns, as soon as foot has touched the threshold,
       Or drowsily goes off in sleep and seeks
       Forgetfulness, or maybe bustles about
       And makes for town again. In such a way
       Each human flees himself- a self in sooth,
       As happens, he by no means can escape;
       And willy-nilly he cleaves to it and loathes,
       Sick, sick, and guessing not the cause of ail.
       Yet should he see but that, O chiefly then,
       Leaving all else, he'd study to divine
       The nature of things, since here is in debate
       Eternal time and not the single hour,
       Mortal's estate in whatsoever remains
       After great death.
       And too, when all is said,
       What evil lust of life is this so great
       Subdues us to live, so dreadfully distraught
       In perils and alarms? one fixed end
       Of life abideth for mortality;
       Death's not to shun, and we must go to meet.
       Besides we're busied with the same devices,
       Ever and ever, and we are at them ever,
       And there's no new delight that may be forged
       By living on. But whilst the thing we long for
       Is lacking, that seems good above all else;
       Thereafter, when we've touched it, something else
       We long for; ever one equal thirst of life
       Grips us agape. And doubtful 'tis what fortune
       The future times may carry, or what be
       That chance may bring, or what the issue next
       Awaiting us. Nor by prolonging life
       Take we the least away from death's own time,
       Nor can we pluck one moment off, whereby
       To minish the aeons of our state of death.
       Therefore, O man, by living on, fulfil
       As many generations as thou may:
       Eternal death shall there be waiting still;
       And he who died with light of yesterday
       Shall be no briefer time in death's No-more
       Than he who perished months or years before.