Ah me! for aught that ever I could read,
  Could ever hear by tale or history,
  The course of true love never did run smooth: 
  But either it was different in blood;
  Or, if there were a sympathy in choice,
  War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it;
  Making it momentary as a sound,
  Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
  Brief as the lightning in the collied[102] night,
  That, in a spleen,[103] unfolds both heaven and earth,
  And ere a man hath power to say, Behold! 
  The jaws of darkness do devour it up: 
  So quick bright things come to confusion.

[Footnote 98:  Small sword.] [Footnote 99:  Burdens.] [Footnote 100:  Cloud.] [Footnote 101:  Encompassed.] [Footnote 102:  Black.] [Footnote 103:  Caprice, whim.]

FRANCIS BACON.

OF DEATH.

[From the Essays.]

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.  Certainly, the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but the fear of it, as a tribute due unto nature, is weak.  Yet in religious meditations there is sometimes mixture of vanity and of superstition.  You shall read in some of the friars’ books of mortification, that a man should think with himself what the pain is, if he have but his finger’s end pressed or tortured; and thereby imagine what the pains of death are, when the whole body is corrupted and dissolved; when many times death passeth with less pain than the torture of a limb; for the most vital parts are not the quickest of sense.  And by him that spake only as a philosopher and natural man, it was well said, Pompa mortis magis terret quam mors ipsa.[104] Groans and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, and blacks and obsequies, and the like, show death terrible.  It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man so weak but it mates and masters the fear of death, and therefore death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him that can win the combat of him.  Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear preoccupateth[105] it.  It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant perhaps the one is as painful as the other.  He that dies in an earnest pursuit is like one that is wounded in hot blood:  who, for the time, scarce feels the hurt; and therefore a mind fixed and bent upon somewhat that is good doth avert the dolours of death; but, above all, believe it, the sweetest canticle is Nunc dimittis[106] when a man hath obtained worthy ends and expectations.  Death hath this also, that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy:  Extinctus amabitur idem.[107]

[Footnote 104:  The shows of death terrify more than death itself.] [Footnote 105:  Anticipates.] [Footnote 106:  Now thou dismissest us.] [Footnote 107:  The same man will be loved when dead.]