I.

I. JEWISH.

[The conception of Death, as collected from the Old Testament, hardly admits of being precisely formulated. Sometimes the Hebrew mind, especially in its earlier days, was prone to dwell on Death in its sadder aspect as the dark close of the day of life: sometimes (and with increasing clearness as the coming of the Christ drew near), to look through it with a trustful longing, as the entrance into an unknown Future of bliss beyond.

The following passages are accordingly arranged under two heads :

(i.) “In Death there is no remembrance of Thee.”—

THE living know that they shall die :
But the dead know not anything,
Neither have they any more a reward;
For the memory of them is forgotten.
ECCLESIASTES ix. 5.

THOU hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption :

For thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. For the grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee :

They that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.

The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day:

The father to the children shall make known thy truth. ISAIAH XXXViii. 17-19.

(11.)

I KNOW that my redeemer liveth,
And he will rise over the dust at the last :
And after they have thus destroyed my skin,
Yet out of my flesh shall I see God:
Whom I shall see for myself,

And mine eyes shall behold, and not another.
JOB XIX. 25-27.
(As rendered by CANON COOK in THE SPEAKER'S
COMMENTARY.)

[After having passed through various stages of self-conquest, and having acquired all the spiritualization of which it is capable while in the flesh, the soul leaves the body and undergoes further refining processes, until at length, purged of all impurities, it is fit to be absorbed in the soul of all things.]

THE BOOKS say well, my Brothers! each man's life

The outcome of his former living is ;

The bygone wrongs bring forth sorrows and woes, The bygone right breeds bliss.

That which ye sow ye reap. See yonder fields ! The sesamum was sesamum, the corn

Was corn. The Silence and the Darkness knew!
So is a man's fate born.

He cometh, reaper of the things he sowed,
Sesamum, corn, so much cast in past birth;
And so much weed and poison-stuff, which mar
Him and the aching earth.

Of a dark grove I strayed-a sluggish wood, Where scarce the faint fires of the setting stars,

breath,

Might pierce the darkling pines. A twilight drear
Brooded o'er all the depths, and filled the dank
And sunken hollows of the rocks with shapes
Of terror, beckoning hands and noiseless feet
Flitting from shade to shade, wide eyes that stared
With horror, and dumb mouths which seemed to
cry,

Yet cried not. An ineffable despair

Was over them and that dark world and took
The gazer captive, and a mingled pang
Of grief and anger, grown to fierce revolt
And hatred of the Invisible Force which holds
The issue of men's lives and binds us fast
Within the net of Fate, as the fisher takes
The little quivering sea-things from the sea
And flings them panting down to die on the shore,
Then spreads his net for more. And then again,
I knew myself and those, creatures who lie
Within the strong grasp of Unchanging Law,
Which binds them round with hands unseen, and
chains

Which do support the feeble life which else
Were spent on barren space; and thus I came
To look with less of horror, more of thought,
And bore to see the sight of pain that yet
Should grow to healing, when the concrete stain
Of life and act were purged, and the cleansed soul,
Renewed by the slow wear and waste of time,
Soared after æons of days.

LEWIS MORRIS.
Epic of Hades. (K. Paul.)

IV.

HADES.

THEN from those dark

And dreadful precincts passing, ghostly fields
And voiceless took me. A faint twilight veiled
The leafless, shadowy trees and herbless plains.
There stirred no breath of air to wake to life
The slumbers of the world. The sky above
Was one gray, changeless cloud. There looked
no eye

Of Life from the veiled heavens; the realm of Death
Was round me everywhere. And yet no fear
Nor horror took me here, where was no pain
Nor dread, save that strange tremor which assails
One who in life's hot noontide looks on death
And knows he too shall die. The ghosts which rose
From every darkling copse showed thin and pale-
Thinner and paler far than those I left

In agony, even as Pity seems to wear
A thinner form than Fear.

Whom there I saw, waiting as we shall wait,

The Beatific End, but thin and pale

As the young faith which made them, touched a little

By the sad memories of the earth; made glad

A little by past joys; no more, and wrapt

In musing on the brief play played by them

Upon the lively earth, yet ignorant

Of the long lapse of years, and what had been.
Since they too breathed Life's air, or if they knew,
Keeping some echo only; but their pain
Was fainter than their joy, and a great hope
Like ours possessed them dimly.

LEWIS MORRIS.
Epic of Hades. (K. Paul.)

IV. HADES.

(From "The Waking of Eurydice.")

ONCE I was thy bride; it may be; I am now the

bride of Death,

Vexed no more with throbbing pulses, led by no mad mortal breath;

Vain those hands that stretch to seize me; vain those pleading lips and eyes,

I am but the shade of shadows and a wandering wind of sighs.

In the urn of brass that moulders in our garden year by year,

There is more of me to echo to thine ecstasy than here;

And the dying grasp that gathered close around thy answering hand

Said farewell, farewell for ever, if thy heart could understand.

EDMUND W. Gosse. New Poems. (K. Paul.)

www

IV.

THE GARDEN OF PROSERPINE.
HERE, where the world is quiet,
Here, where all trouble seems
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot
In doubtful dreams of dreams;
I watch the green field growing
For reaping folk and sowing,
For harvest-time and mowing,
A sleepy world of streams.

I am tired of tears and laughter,
And men that laugh and weep;
Of what may come hereafter

For men that sow to reap:
I am weary of days and hours,
Blown buds of barren flowers,
Desires and dreams and powers
And everything but sleep.

Here life has death for neighbour,
And far from eye or ear
Wan waves and wet winds labour,
Weak ships and spirits steer;
They drive adrift, and whither
They wot not who make thither;
But no such winds blow hither,

And no such things grow here.

No growth of moor or coppice,
No heather-flower or vine,
But bloomless buds of poppies,
Green grapes of Proserpine,

Pale beds of blowing rushes Where no leaf blooms or blushes Save this whereout she crushes For dead men deadly wine.

Pale, without name or number,
In fruitless fields of corn,
They bow themselves and slumber
All night till light is born;
And like a soul belated,
In hell and heaven unmated,
By cloud and mist abated

Comes out of darkness morn.

Though one were strong as seven, He too with death shall dwell, Nor wake with wings in heaven,

Nor weep for pains in hell; Though one were fair as roses, His beauty clouds and closes; And well though love reposes, In the end it is not well.

Pale, beyond porch and portal,

Crowned with calm leaves, she stands Who gathers all things mortal

With cold immortal hands;

Her languid lips are sweeter
Than love's who fears to greet her
To men that mix and meet her
From many times and lands.

She waits for each and other,
She waits for all men born;
Forgets the earth her mother,

The life of fruits and corn;
And spring and seed and swallow
Take wing for her and follow
Where summer song rings hollow
And flowers are put to scorn.

There go the loves that wither,

The old loves with wearier wings; And all dead years draw thither, And all disastrous things; Dead dreams of days forsaken, Blind buds that snows have shaken, Wild leaves that winds have taken, Red strays of ruined springs.

"TWAS not the hour of death the Master feared:
He oft had died before, his soul had passed
Through many moulds, as each new cycle neared
Hoping the Golden Day had come at last.

But like a giant 'neath the weight of age
Hope was bowed down, and oft he ceased to see
Among the spheres the looked-for heritage
Where he might rest from earth's illusions free.

Whither doth this metempsychosis tend?

Doubt stirs the heavy question in his breast. All that begins is toiling towards its end; Oblivion hath for all its day of rest.