Which played so idly with the darts of death.”
The truism appears to have been a favourite theme with Prior, who expatiates upon it in a variety of keys. Here is one other specimen from his stores, in octosyllabic metre:—
“All must obey the general doom,
Down from Alcides to Tom Thumb.
Grim Pluto will not be withstood
By force or craft. Tall Robin Hood,
As well as Little John, is dead—
(You see how deeply I am read).”
Does not Cervantes begin the last chapter of his great work with the reflection that, as all human things, especially the lives of men, are transitory, ever advancing to their decline and final termination, so “Don Quixote was favoured by no privilege of exemption from the common fate,” for the period of his dissolution came when he least thought of it—and he died.
Death’s final conquest is the subject of a fine poem of James Shirley’s; the piece by which he is, in every sense, best remembered. How death lays his icy hands on kings, is there told with pitiless candour; and the merry monarch, par excellence, Charles the Second, is said to have greatly admired the poetry, if not the candour, of Shirley’s strain. Early or late, all stoop to fate; that is the trite topic. But the moral is noble, and nobly expressed. The poet reminds laurelled victors that the garlands are withering on their brow, and that soon upon death’s purple altar shall the “victor victim” bleed:—