Nature calls us to meditate of death by those things which are the
instruments of acting it; and God by all the variety of His
providence, makes us see death everywhere, in all variety of
circumstances, and dressed up for all the fancies, and the expectation
of every single person. Nature hath given us one harvest every year,
but death hath two; and the spring and the autumn send throngs of men
and women to charnel-houses; and all the summer long, men are
recovering from their evils of the spring, till the dog-days come, and
then the Sirian star makes the summer deadly; and the fruits of autumn
are laid up for all the year's provision, and the man that gathers
them eats and surfeits, and dies and needs them not, and himself is
laid up for eternity; and he that escapes till winter, only stays for
another opportunity, which the distempers of that quarter minister to
him with great variety. Thus death reigns in all the portions of our
time. The autumn with its fruits provides disorders for us, and the
winter's cold turns them into sharp diseases, and the spring brings
flowers to strew our hearse, and the summer gives green turf and
brambles to bind upon our graves. Calentures and surfeit, cold and
agues, are the four quarters of the year; and you can go no whither,
but you tread upon a dead man's bones.
The wild fellow in Petronius, that escaped upon a broken table from
the furies of a shipwreck, as he was sunning himself upon the rocky
shore, espied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves, ballasted
with sand in the folds of his garment, and carried by his civil enemy,
the sea, towards the shore to find a grave. And it cast him into some
sad thoughts, that peradventure this man's wife, in some part of the
continent, safe and warm, looks next month for the good man's return;
or, it may be, his son knows nothing of the tempest; or his father
thinks of that affectionate kiss which still is warm upon the good old
man's cheek, ever since he took a kind farewell, and he weeps with joy
to think how blessed he shall be when his beloved boy returns into the
circle of his father's arms. These are the thoughts of mortals; this
is the end and sum of all their designs. A dark night and an ill
guide, a boisterous sea and a broken cable, a hard rock and a rough
wind, dashed in pieces the fortune of a whole family; and they that
shall weep loudest for the accident are not yet entered into the
storm, and yet have suffered shipwreck. Then, looking upon the
carcass, he knew it, and found it to be the master of the ship, who,
the day before, cast up the accounts of his patrimony and his trade,
and named the day when he thought to be at home. See how the man
swims, who was so angry two days since! His passions are becalmed with
the storm, his accounts cast up, his cares at an end, his voyage done,
and his gains are the strange events of death, which, whether they be
good or evil, the men that are alive seldom trouble themselves
concerning the interest of the dead.
It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and
it is visible to us who are alive. Reckon but from the sprightfulness
of youth, and the fair cheeks and full eyes of childhood; from the
vigorousness and strong flexure of the joints of five-and-twenty, to
the hollowness and deadly paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of
a three days' burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be very
great and very strange. But so have I seen a rose newly springing from
the clefts of its hood, and, at first, it was fair as the morning, and
full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece; but when a ruder
breath hath forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too
youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to
decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the
head, and broke its stalk; and at night, having lost some of its
leaves, and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and
out-worn faces. The same is the portion of every man and every woman;
the heritage of worms and serpents, rottenness and cold dishonour, and
our beauty so changed, that our acquaintance quickly knew us not; and
that change mingled with so much horror, or else meets so with our
fears and weak discoursings, that they who, six hours ago, tended upon
us either with charitable or ambitious services, cannot, without some
regret, stay in the room alone, where the body lies stripped of its
life and honour. I have read of a fair young German gentleman, who,
living, often refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of
his friends' desire by giving way, that after a few days' burial, they
might send a painter to his vault, and, if they saw cause for it, draw
the image of his death unto the life. They did so, and found his face
half eaten, and his midriff and backbone full of serpents; and so he
stands pictured among his armed ancestors. So does the fairest beauty
change; and it will be as bad with you and me; and then what servants
shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? what friends to visit us?
what officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholesome cloud
reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults, which
are the longest weepers for our funeral?
A man may read a sermon, the best and most passionate that ever man
preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of kings. In the
same Escurial where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power,
and decree war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery, where
their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time shall be no more;
and where our kings have been crowned, their ancestors lie interred,
and they must walk over their grandsire's head to take his crown.
There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest
change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from
living like gods to die like men. There is enough to cool the flames
of lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch of
covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colours of a
lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the
peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the
despised princes mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of
mortality, and tell all the world that, when we die, our ashes shall
be equal to kings', and our accounts easier, and our pains for our
crowns shall be less.
_Jeremy Taylor._