Therefore if you should chance to hear some man Pitying his own lot, that after death Either his body must decay in the earth, Or be consumed by flames or jaws of beasts, Then may you know that his words ring not true, That in his heart there lurks some secret sting, Though he himself deny that he believes Any sense will remain with him in death. For in fact he grants not all that he professes, Nor by the roots does he expel and thrust Self forth from life, but all unwittingly Assumes that of self something will survive. For when a living man forbodes that birds And beasts may rend his body after death, Then does he pity himself, nor can he quite Separate and withdraw from the outcast body, But fancying that that other is himself, With his own sense imagines it endued. So he complains because he was born mortal, Nor sees that there will be in real death No other self which living can lament That he has perished, none that will stand by And grieve over his burnt and mangled corpse. For if it be an evil after death To be mauled by teeth of beasts, why should it seem Less cruel to be laid out on a pyre And scorched with hot flames, or to be embalmed In stifling honey, or to lie stiff and cold Couched on the cool slab of a chilly stone, Or to be crushed down under a weight of earth? “Now no more shall thy home, nor thy chaste wife Receive thee in gladness, nor shall thy sweet children Run forth to meet thee and snatch kisses from thee, And touch thee to the heart with silent joy. No more canst thou be prosperous in thy doings, A bulwark to thy friends. Poor wretch!” men cry, “How wretchedly has one disastrous day Stript thee of all life’s many benefits!” Yet this withal they add not: “Nor henceforth Does craving for these things beset thee more.” This truth, could men but grasp it once in thought And follow thought with words, would forthwith set Their spirits free from a huge ache and dread. “Thou, as thou art, sunk in the sleep of death, Shalt so continue through all time to come, Delivered from all feverish miseries: But we who watched thee on thy dreadful pyre Change into ashes, we insatiably Bewept thee; nor shall any lapse of days Remove that lifelong sorrow from our hearts.” Of him who spoke thus, well might we inquire, What grief so exceeding bitter is there here, If in the end all comes to sleep and rest, That one should therefore pine with lifelong misery.