That individual love should resent the thraldom of death may be unreasonable; but it is useless to ignore the fact of such resentment, or to proffer consolations which can neither convince nor console. From the earliest times the poets, above all others, have borne witness to love’s protest. Perhaps the most moving lyric in Roman literature is that short elegy written by Catullus at his brother’s grave, full of a deep passion which can hardly be conveyed in another tongue. Borne far o’er many lands, o’er many seas, On this sad service, brother, have I sped, To proffer thee death’s last solemnities, And greet, though words be vain, the silent dead: For thou art lost, so cruel fate decrees; Ah, brother, from my sight untimely fled! Yet take these gifts, ordained in bygone years For mournful dues when funeral rites befell; Take them, all streaming with a brother’s tears: And thus, for evermore--hail and farewell! A similar cry is heard in that famous passage of Virgil, where the bereaved Orpheus refuses to be comforted for the loss of his Eurydice. And nearly two thousand years later we find Wordsworth, a Christian poet, echoing the same lamentation: ... When I stood forlorn, Knowing my heart’s best treasure was no more; That neither present time, nor years unborn, Could to my sight that heavenly face restore. Mark the reference to “years unborn.” Wordsworth was a believer in immortality; but immortality itself cannot restore what is past and gone. All the sages and seers and prophets, that have given mankind the benefit of their wisdom since the world began, have so far failed to provide the least crumb of comfort for the ravages of death, or to explain why love should be for ever built up to be for ever overthrown, and why union should always be followed by disseverance. There may, of course, be a solution of this tragedy hereafter to be discovered by mankind; all that we know is that, as yet, no human being has found the clue to the mystery, or, if he has found it, has vouchsafed the knowledge to his fellow-mortals. For we must dismiss as idle the assertion that such things cannot be communicated in words. Anything that is apprehended by the mind can be expressed by the mouth--not adequately, perhaps, yet still, in some measure, expressed--and the reason why this greatest of secrets has never been conveyed is that, as yet, it has never been apprehended.