Is it possible that these can be obscure intimations of that bygone time when WE were rocked in the bosom of the Divine consciousness? Perhaps.... And now if the reader will pardon a piece of moralizing, we would say that these expressions teach us in the most emphatic way that—'This is not our rest.' So that when we have dived into every mine of knowledge and drunk from every fountain of pleasure; when, with Dante, we arrive at the painful conclusion that
'Tutto l'oro, ch'è sotto la luna,
E che già fu, di queste anime stanche
Non poterebbe farne posar una,'
(since, indeed, the Finite can never gain entire satisfaction in itself)—we may not despair, but still the heart-throbbings, knowing that He who has—for a season—enveloped us in the mantle of this sleep-rounded life, and thrown around himself the drapery of the universe—spangling it with stars—will again take us back to his fatherly bosom.
Somewhat analogous to these, and arguing the eternity of our existence, we have such words as 'decease,' which merely imports a withdrawal; 'demise,' implying also a laying down, a removal. By the way, it is rather curious to observe the notions in the mind of mankind that have given rise to the words expressing 'death.' Thus we have the Latin word mors—allied, perhaps, to the Greek μὁιρα and μοἱρα,[1] from μεἱρομαι—to portion out, to assign. Even this, however, there was a repulsion to using; and both the Greeks and Romans were wont to slip clear of the employment of their θἁνατος, mors, etc., by such circumlocutions as vitam suam mutare, transire e seculo; κοιμἡσατο chalkeon hypnon]—he slept the brazen sleep (Homer's Iliad, λ, 241); δἑ σκὁτος οσσ εκἁλυψεν—and darkness covered his eyes (Iliad, Ζ, 11); or he completeth the destiny of life, etc. This reminds us of the French aversion to uttering their mort. These expressions, again, are suggestive of our 'fate,' with an application similar to the Latin fatum, which, indeed, is none other than 'id quod fatum est a deis'—a God's word. So that in this sense we may all be considered 'fatalists,' and all things fated. Why not? However, in the following from Festus, it is the 'deil' that makes the assertion:
'Festus. Forced on us.
Lucifer. All things are of necessity.
Festus. Then best.
But the good are never fatalists. The bad
Alone act by necessity, they say.
Lucifer. It matters not what men assume to be;
Or good, or bad, they are but what they are.'
In which we may agree that his majesty was not so very far wrong.
Moreover, 'Why should we mourn departed friends?'—since we know that they are but lying in the μοιμητἡριον (cemetery)—the sleeping place; or, as the vivid old Hebrew faith would have it, the house of the living (Bethaim). Is not this testimony for the soul's immortality worth as much as all the rhapsody written thereon, from Plato to Addison?
Some words are the very essence of poetry; redolent with all beauteous phantasies; odoriferous as flowers in spring, or discoursing an awful organ-melody, like to the re-bellowing of the hoarse-sounding sea. For instance, those two noble old Saxon words 'main' and 'deep,' that we apply to the ocean—what a music is there about them! The 'main' is the maegen—the strength, the strong one; the great 'deep' is precisely what the name imports. Our employment of 'deep' reminds of the Latin altum, which, properly signifying high or lofty, is, by a familiar species of metonymy, put for its opposite.
By the way, how exceedingly timid are our poets and poetasters generally of the open sea—la pleine mer. They linger around the shores thereof, in a vain attempt to sit snugly there à leur aise, while they 'call spirits from the vasty deep'—that never did and never would come on such conditions, though they grew hoarse over it. We all remember how Sandy Smith labors with making abortive grabs at its amber tails, main, etc. (rather slippery articles on the whole)—but he is not
'A shepherd in the Hebrid Isles,
Placed far amid the melancholy main!'