The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day, Had he thy reason, would he skip and play? Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flow'ry food, And licks the hand uprais'd to shed his blood.
Me, let the tender office long engage
To rock the cradle of reposing age;
With lenient art extend a mother's breath,
Make languor smile, and smooth the bed of death, Explore the thought, explain the asking eye,
And save awhile one parent from the sky.
Anne dapes quem jam poscunt, epulæque parandæ, Provida si fuerit mens sibi, ludat ovis? Lætus ad extremum florentia pabula carpit, Lambit et armatas in sua colla manus.
Sit pia cura mihi longùm invigilare senectæ,
Et matri somnos conciliare leves;
Quâ possim eluctantem animam leni arte morari, Et dulci alloquio fallere mortis iter. Explorare velit quid mens incerta, cavere
In cœlum ut redeat serior una parens.
Claud. Ay, but to die and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice: To be imprison'd in the viewless winds And blown with restless violence round about The pendent world; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thoughts Imagine howling! 'tis too horrible! The weariest and most loathed worldly life Which age, ach, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
Measure for Measure. Act iii.
Attamen, heu! quam triste mori! nec quo sit eundum Scire priùs-positum clausâ putrescere in arcâ; Membrorum sisti motus, alacremque vigorem In luteam solvi molem-quam triste! capacem Lætitiæque jocique animam torrentibus uri Ignibus, aut montis* claudi glacialis in alveo; Suspensumve dari ventis, noctesque diesque Hùc illùc, invisâ vi, turbantibus orbem. Aut graviora pati, quam, quos cruciatibus actos Tartareas implere feris ululatibus umbras, Anxia mens hominum, mirum et miserabile! finxit- Horrendum! quodcunque mali ferat ægra senectus, Pauperiesve dolorve gravis, tractæve catenæ, Omnia quæ possunt infestam reddere vitam, Esse voluptates lætæ Elysiumque videntur Spectanti mortem propè, venturamque timenti.
Hamlet's Soliloquy on Life and Death.
To be, or not to be, that is the question; Whether 'tis nobler in the mind, to suffer The stings and arrows of outrageous fortune; Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And, by opposing, end them? To die-to sleep- No more; and, by a sleep, to say we end The heart-ach, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die; - to sleep- To sleep!-perchance to dream; ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect, That makes calamity of so long life:
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despis'd love, the law's delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear To grunt and sweat under a weary life; But that the dread of something after death- The undiscover'd country, from whose bourn No traveller returns-puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have, Than fly to others that we know not of. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought; And enterprises of great pith and moment, With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action.
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