Between the vault of the world and your dear head;
That’s Death, my little sister, and the Night
That was our Mother beckons us to bed:
Where large oblivion in her house is laid
For us tired children now our games are played.
Indeed, one might quote the poets (who are the teachers of mankind) indefinitely in this regard. They are all agreed. What did Sleep and Death to the body of Sarpedon? They took it home. And every one who dies in all the Epics is better for the dying. Some complain of it afterwards I will admit; but they are hard to please. Roland took it as the end of battle; and there was a Scandinavian fellow caught on the north-east coast, I think, who in dying thanked God for all the joy he had had in his life—as you may have heard before. And St. Anthony of Assisi (not of Padua) said, “Welcome, little sister Death!” as was his way. And one who stands right up above most men who write or speak said it was the only port after the tide-streams and bar-handling of this journey.
So it is; let us be off to the hills. The silence and the immensity that inhabit them are the simulacra of such things.
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PRINTERS, PLYMOUTH