Writers on... Death (A Book of Quotes, Poems and Literary Reflections). Amelia Carruthers
great nature’s or our own abyss Of thought we could but snatch a certainty,Perhaps mankind might find the path they miss— But then ‘t would spoil much good philosophy.One system eats another up, and this Much as old Saturn ate his progeny;For when his pious consort gave him stonesIn lieu of sons, of these he made no bones.
But System doth reverse the Titan’s breakfast, And eats her parents, albeit the digestionIs difficult. Pray tell me, can you make fast, After due search, your faith to any question?Look back o’er ages, ere unto the stake fast You bind yourself, and call some mode the best one.Nothing more true than not to trust your senses;And yet what are your other evidences?
For me, I know nought; nothing I deny, Admit, reject, contemn; and what know you,Except perhaps that you were born to die? And both may after all turn out untrue.
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An age may come, Font of Eternity, When nothing shall be either old or new.Death, so call’d, is a thing which makes men weep,And yet a third of life is pass’d in sleep.
A sleep without dreams, after a rough day Of toil, is what we covet most; and yetHow clay shrinks back from more quiescent clay! The very Suicide that pays his debtAt once without instalments (an old way Of paying debts, which creditors regret)Lets out impatiently his rushing breath,Less from disgust of life than dread of death.
‘T is round him, near him, here, there, every where; And there ‘s a courage which grows out of fear,Perhaps of all most desperate, which will dare The worst to know it:—when the mountains rearTheir peaks beneath your human foot, and there You look down o’er the precipice, and drearThe gulf of rock yawns,—you can’t gaze a minuteWithout an awful wish to plunge within it.
– Lord Byron (1788 - 1824), one of the greatest English Romantic poets; 'If From Great Nature's Or Our Own Abyss', from Don Juan (1824) – an epic satire novel-in-verse, loosely based on the legendary hero of the same name. When the first two cantos were published anonymously in 1819, the poem was criticised for its 'immoral content' though it was also an immediate popular success.
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A mother sat by her little child; she was very sad, for she feared it would die. It was quite pale, and its little eyes were closed, and sometimes it drew a heavy deep breath, almost like a sigh; and then the mother gazed more sadly than ever on the poor little creature. Some one knocked at the door, and a poor old man walked in. He was wrapped in something that looked like a great horse-cloth; and he required it truly to keep him warm, for it was cold winter; the country everywhere lay covered with snow and ice, and the wind blew so sharply that it cut one’s face. The little child had dozed off to sleep for a moment, and the mother, seeing that the old man shivered with the cold, rose and placed a small mug of beer on the stove to warm for him. The old man sat and rocked the cradle; and the mother seated herself on a chair near him, and looked at her sick child who still breathed heavily, and took hold of its little hand.
“You think I shall keep him, do you not?” she said. “Our all-merciful God will surely not take him away from me.”
The old man, who was indeed Death himself, nodded his head in a peculiar manner, which might have signified either Yes, or No; and the mother cast down her eyes, while the tears rolled down her cheeks. Then her head became heavy, for she had not closed her eyes for three days and nights, and she slept, but only for a moment. Shivering with cold, she started up and looked round the room. The old man was gone, and her child—it was gone too!—the old man had taken it with him. In the corner of the room the old clock began to strike; “whirr” went the chains, the heavy weight sank to the ground, and the clock stopped; and the poor mother rushed out of the house calling for her child. Out in the snow sat a
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woman in long black garments, and she said to the mother, “Death has been with you in your room. I saw him hastening away with your little child; he strides faster than the wind, and never brings back what he has taken away.”
“Only tell me which way he has gone,” said the mother; “tell me the way, I will find him.”
“I know the way,” said the woman in the black garments; “but before I tell you, you must sing to me all the songs that you have sung to your child; I love these songs, I have heard them before. I am Night, and I saw your tears flow as you sang.”
“I will sing them all to you,” said the mother; “but do not detain me now. I must overtake him, and find my child.”
But Night sat silent and still. Then the mother wept and sang, and wrung her hands. And there were many songs, and yet even more tears; till at length Night said, “Go to the right, into the dark forest of fir-trees; for I saw Death take that road with your little child.”
– Hans Christian Andersen (1805 - 1875), a Danish author best remembered for his fairy tales. Andersen's popularity is not limited to children however; his stories, called eventyr in Danish, deal with themes that transcend age and nationality. The extract above is taken from the opening lines of Andersen's short yet heart-rending fable, The Story of a Mother (1848).
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“Why does your papa like to frighten us?” said the pretty girl with a sigh and a little shudder.
“He doesn’t, dear Carmilla, it is the very furthest thing from his mind.”
“Are you afraid, dearest?”
“I should be very much if I fancied there was any real danger of my being attacked as those poor people were.”
“You are afraid to die?”
“Yes, every one is.”
“But to die as lovers may—to die together, so that they may live together. Girls are caterpillars while they live in the world, to be finally butterflies when the summer comes; but in the meantime there are grubs and larvae, don’t you see - each with their peculiar propensities, necessities and structure. So says Monsieur Buffon, in his big book, in the next room.”
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Later in the day the doctor came, and was closeted with papa for some time. He was a skilful man, of sixty and upwards, he wore powder, and shaved his pale face as smooth as a pumpkin. He and papa emerged from the room together, and I heard papa laugh, and say as they came out:
“Well, I do wonder at a wise man like you. What do you say to hippogriffs and dragons?”
The doctor was smiling, and made answer, shaking his head—
“Nevertheless life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.”
And so they walked on, and I heard no more. I did not then know what the doctor had been broaching, but I think I guess it now.
– Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814 - 1873), 'Chapter IV', from Carmilla, first published in 1871 as a serial narrative in The Dark Blue. It tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla – predating Bram