Chases in arras, gilded emptiness,
Shadows well mounted, dreams in a career,
Embroider’d lies, nothing between two dishes,—
These are the pleasures here.”
Marcus Antoninus, in his “Meditations,” harps on the note of shadow-hunting or shadow-hunted shadows. You will soon be reduced to ashes and a skeleton, he keeps telling himself; and even if you leave a name,—what is a name? what is in a name? Vox et præterea nihil. The shadows you, a shade, pursue, are miserably shadowy. The prizes of life are, he says, so paltry, that to scuffle for them is ridiculous, and puts him in mind of a set of puppies snarling for a bone, or of the contests of children for a toy. Wherever he looks, the wide world over, and in whatever age of its history, he sees abundance of people very busy, and big with their projects, who presently drop off, and moulder to dust and ashes. The freshest laurels wither apace, and the echoes of Fame are soon silenced. The “insect youth” that people the air and make it murmurous with busy life,—is not their close resemblance to the children of men one of poetry’s common-places?
“To Contemplation’s sober eye,
Such is the race of man;
And they that creep, and they that fly,
Shall end where they began.
“Alike the busy and the gay,