Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.

JULIUS CÆSAR ii. 2.

I HAVE so abject a conceit of this common way

of existence, this retaining to the Sun and Elements, I cannot think this is to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity; in expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in my best meditations do often defy death: I honour any man that contemns it, nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes me naturally love a Soldier, and honour those tattered and contemptible Regiments, that will die at the command of a Sergeant.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

Now farewell light, thou sunshine bright,

And all beneath the sky!

May coward shame distain his name,

The wretch that dares not die!

BURNS.

Ay, but to die, and go we know not where.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE iii. I.

I

AM not content to pass away like a weaver's shuttle. These metaphors solace me not, nor sweeten the unpalatable draught of mortality. I care not to be carried with the tide, and reluct at the inevitable course of destiny. I am in love with this green earth; the face of town and country; the unspeakable rural solitudes, and the sweet security of streets.

CHARLES LAMB.

FOR who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing, anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind?

GRAY.

Unless things mortal move them not at all.

HAMLET ii. 2.

UT the dead genii were satisfied with little-a few

BUT

violets—a cake dipped in wine, or a morsel of honeycomb. Daily, from the time when his childish footsteps were still uncertain, had Marius taken them their portion of the family meal, at the second course, amidst the silence of the company. They loved those who brought them their sustenance; but, deprived of those services, would be heard wandering through the house, crying sorrowfully in the stillness of the night.

IN consecrated earth,

And on the holy hearth,

WALTER PATER.

The Lars and Lemures moan with mid

night plaint;

In urns, and altars round,

A drear and dying sound—

MILTON.

And beauty making beautiful old rhyme,

In praise of ladies dead and lovely knights.

SONN. CVI.

THERE
HERE are chapels in the cathedral of man's

highest art as in that of his inmost life, not made to be set open to the eyes and feet of the world. Love and death and memory keep charge for us in silence of some beloved names. It is the crowning glory of genius, the final miracle and transcendent gift of poetry, that it can add to the number of these, and engrave on the very heart of our remembrance fresh names and memories of its own creation.

SWINBURNE.

BLESSINGS be with them, and eternal praise,
Who gave us nobler loves, and nobler cares—
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs
Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays!
O might my name be numbered among theirs,
Then gladly would I end my mortal days.

WORDSWORTH.

Glory is like a circle in the water,
Which never ceaseth to enlarge itself,

Till, by broad spreading, it disperse to nought.

I KING HENRY VI. i. 2.

THESE fingers of lamplight, struggling up through smoke and thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the ancient reign of night, what thinks Boötes of them, as he leads his Huntingdogs over the Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire?

CARLYLE.

THUS those celestial fires,

Though seeming mute,

The fallacy of our desires,

And all the pride of life, confute.

For they have watched since first

The world had birth,

And found sin in itself accurst,

And nothing permanent on earth.

HABINGTON.