dearest affections, or of whatever else the amorous Spring-time gave his thoughts of contentment, then unvaluable; and he shall find that all the Art which his elder years have, can draw no other vapour out of these dissolutions than heavy, secret, and sad sighs. He shall find nothing remaining but those sorrows which grow up after our fast-springing youth, overtake it when it is at a stand, and overtop it utterly when it begins to wither; insomuch as looking back from the very instant time and from our now being, the poor, diseased, and captive creature hath as little sense of his former miseries and pains as he that is most blessed in common Opinion hath of his forepast pleasures and delights. For whatsoever is cast behind us is just nothing; and what is to come, deceitful hope hath it. Omnia quae ventura sunt in incerto jacent. Only those few black Swans I must except, who, having had the grace to value worldly vanities at no more than their own price, do, by retaining the comfortable memory of a well-acted life, behold death without dread, and the grave without fear, and embrace both as necessary guides to endless glory.1 EDMUND SPENSER (1553-1599) WHE WHEN I bethinke me on that speech why-leare Me seemes, that though she all unworthy were 1 From the preface to the History of the World. And love of things so vaine to cast away: Whose flowring pride, so fading and so fickle, Then gin I thinke on that which Nature sayd, That is contrayr to Mutabilitie; For all that moveth doth in Change delight; With Him that is the God of Sabaoth hight: O! that great Sabaoth God, grant me that Sabaoth's sight.1 I SIR PHILIP SIDNEY (1554-1586) WOULD not change my joy for the empire of the world. All things in my former life have been vain, vain, vain.2 FRANCIS BACON (1561-1626) (VISCOUNT ST. ALBANS) THE World's a bubble, and the life of man Less than a span: In his conception wretched; from the womb, 1 The Faerie Queene, Book vii. Canto viii. Curst from the cradle, and brought up to years Who then to frail Mortality shall trust, Yet since with sorrow here we live opprest, Courts are but only superficial Schools The rural parts are turned into a den And where's a city from all vice so free, may be term'd the worst of all the three? Domestic cares afflict the husband's bed, Those that live single, take it for a curse, Some would have children: those that have them, none, What is it then to have or have no wife, Our own affections still at home to please To cross the sea to any foreign soil, Wars with their noise affright us; when they cease, What then remains, but that we still should cry 1 From "Poems of Francis Bacon " (1870). WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (1564-1616) [There are those who hold that all the sonnets of Shakespeare were dramatic, in the sense of giving voice to thoughts and emotions not his own. On the other hand, Wordsworth declared that in the sonnets the poet had "unlocked his heart"; and we find Dr. Dowden writing-"With Wordsworth, Sir Henry Taylor, and Mr. Swinburne, with François Victor Hugo, with Kreyssig, Ulrici, Gervinus, and Herman Isaac, with Boaden, Armitage Brown, and Hallam, with Furnivall, Spalding, Rossetti, and Palgrave, I believe that Shakespeare's Sonnets express his own feelings in his own person." In the following passages, therefore, Shakespeare may perhaps be giving utterance to his own views of Life and Death.] L' IKE as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end; Each changing place with that which goes before, In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown'd, And Time that gave doth now his gift confound. And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.1 1 From Sonnet lx. This Life and the ext That time of year thou mayst in me behold When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang Upon those boughs which shake against the cold, Which by and by black night doth take away, nourish'd by.1 No, Time, thou shalt not boast that I do change : Not wondering at the present nor the past, I will be true, despite thy scythe and thee.2 Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, [Press'd by] these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, 1 From Sonnet lxxiii. 2 Sonnet cxxiii. Ho For hi And yet nobl A |