And wherefore rather I made choice To commune with that barren voice, Than him that said, “Rejoice! rejoice!” [1] The insensibility of Nature to man’s death has been the eloquent theme of many poets. _Cf_. Byron, _Lara_, canto ii. _ad init_., and Matthew Arnold, _The Youth of Nature_. [2] _Cf. Palace of Art_, “the riddle of the painful earth”. [3] _Seq_. The reference is to Acts of the Apostles vii. 54-60. [4] Suggested by Shakespeare, _Julius Cæsar_, Act v., Sc. 5:— and _the elements So mix’d in_ him that Nature, etc. [5] An excellent commentary on this is Clough’s _Perché pensa, pensando vecchia_. [6] _Cf_. Job xiv. 21: “His sons come to honour, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of them.” [7] So Bishop Butler, _Analogy_, ch. i.: “We cannot argue _from the reason of the thing_ that death is the destruction of living agents because we know not at all what death is in itself, but only some of its effects”. [8] So Milton, enfolding this idea of death, _Paradise Lost_, ii., 672-3:— What seemed his head The _likeness_ of a kingly crown had on. [9] _Cf_. Plato, _Phaedo_, x.:—ἆρα ἔχει ἀληθειάν τινα ὄψις τε καὶ ἀκοὴ τοῖς ἀνθρώποις. ἤ τά γε τοιᾶυτα καὶ οἱ ποἱηταὶ ἡμὶν ἄει θρυλοῦσιν ὅτι οὐτ ακούομεν ἀκριβὲς οὐδὲν οὔτε ὁρῶμεν. “Have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as poets are always telling us, inaccurate witnesses?” “Have sight and hearing any truth in them? Are they not, as poets are always telling us, inaccurate witnesses?” The proper commentary on the whole of this passage is Plato _passim_, but the _Phaedo_ particularly, _cf. Republic_, vii., viii. and xiv.-xv. [10] An allusion to the myth that when souls are sent to occupy a body again they drink of Lethe that they may forget their previous existence. See the famous passage towards the end of the tenth book of Plato’s _Republic_: “All persons are compelled to drink a certain quantity of the water, but those who are not preserved by prudence drink more than the quantity, and each as he drinks forgets everything”. So Milton, _Paradise Lost_, ii., 582-4. [11] The best commentary on this will be found in Herbert Spencer’s _Psychology_. [12] Compare with this Tennyson’s first sonnet (_Works_, Globe Edition, 25), and the lines in the _Ancient Sage_ in the _Passion of the Past_ (_Id_., 551). _Cf_. too the lines in Wordsworth’s ode on _Intimations of Immortality_:— But there’s a tree, of many one, A single field which I have looked upon, Both of them speak of something that is gone; The pansy at my feet Doth the same tale repeat. For other remarkable illustrations of this see the present writer’s _Illustrations of Tennyson_, p. 38. [13] _Cf_. Coleridge, _Ancient Mariner,_ iv.:— “O happy living things ... I blessed them The self-same moment I could pray.”