[From “Cæsar and Pompey,” a Tragedy, by G. Chapman, 1631.]
Cato’s Speech at Utica to a Senator, who had exprest fears on his account.
Away, Statilius; how long shall thy love
Exceed thy knowledge of me, and the Gods,
Whose rights thou wrong’st for my right? have not I
Their powers to guard me in a cause of theirs,
Their justice and integrity to guard me
In what I stand for? he that fears the Gods,
For guard of any goodness, all things fears;
Earth, seas, and air; heav’n; darkness; broad daylight;
Rumour, and silence, and his very shade:
And what an aspen soul has such a creature!
How dangerous to his soul is such a fear!—
In whose cold fits, is all Heavn’s justice shaken
To his faint thoughts; and all the goodness there,
Due to all good men by the Gods’ own vows;
Nay, by the firmness of their endless being;
All which shall fail as soon as any one
Good to a good man in them: for his goodness
Proceeds from them, and is a beam of theirs.
O never more, Statilius, may this fear
Faint thy bold bosom, for thyself or friend,
More than the Gods are fearful to defend.
His thoughts of Death.
Poor Slaves, how terrible this Death is to them!—
If men would sleep, they would be wrath with all
That interrupt them; physic take, to take
The golden rest it brings; both pay and pray
For good and soundest naps: all friends consenting
In those invocations; praying all
“Good rest the Gods vouchsafe you.” But when Death,
Sleep’s natural brother, comes; that’s nothing worse,
But better (being more rich—and keeps the store—
Sleep ever fickle, wayward still, and poor);
O how men grudge, and shake, and fear, and fly
His stern approaches! all their comforts, taken
In faith, and knowledge of the bliss and beauties
That watch their wakings in an endless life,
Drown’d in the pains and horrors of their sense
Sustain’d but for an hour.
His Discourse with Athenodorus on an After Life.
Cato. As Nature works in all things to an end,
So, in the appropriate honour of that end,
All things precedent have their natural frame;
And therefore is there a proportion
Betwixt the ends of those things and their primes:
For else there could not be in their creation
Always, or for the most part, that firm form
In their still like existence, that we see
In each full creature. What proportion then
Hath an immortal with a mortal substance?
And therefore the mortality, to which
A man is subject, rather is a sleep
Than bestial death; since sleep and death are called
The twins of nature. For, if absolute death,
And bestial, seize the body of a man,
Then there is no proportion in his parts,
(His soul being free from death) which otherwise
Retain divine proportion. For, as sleep
No disproportion holds with human souls,
But aptly quickens the proportion
Twixt them and bodies, making bodies fitter
To give up forms to souls, which is their end:
So death, twin-born of sleep, resolving all
Man’s body’s heavy parts, in lighter nature
Makes a re-union with the sprightly soul;
When in a second life their Beings given!
Hold their proportions firm in highest heaven.
Athenodorus. Hold you, our bodies shall revive resuming
Our souls again to heaven?
Cato. Past doubt; though others
Think heav’n a world too high for our low reaches.
Not knowing the sacred sense of Him that sings.
“Jove can let down a golden chain from heaven.
Which, tied to earth, shall fetch up earth and seas”—
And what’s that golden chain but our pure souls
That, govern’d with his grace and drawn by him,
Can hoist the earthy body up to him?—
The sea, the air, and all the elements,
Comprest in it; not while ’tis thus concrete,
But ’fined by death, and then giv’n heav’nly heat.
We shall, past death,
Retain those forms of knowledge, learn’d in life:
Since if what here we learn we there shall lose,
Our immortality were not life, but time:
And that our souls in reason are immortal,
Their natural and proper objects prove;
Which Immortality and Knowledge are:
For to that object ever is referr’d
The nature of the soul, in which the acts
Of her high faculties are still employ’d;
And that true object must her powers obtain,
To which they are in nature’s aim directed;
Since ’twere absurd to have her set an object
Which possibly she never can aspire.
His last words.
—— now I am safe;
Come, Cæsar, quickly now, or lose your vassal.
Now wing thee, dear Soul, and receive her heaven.
The earth, the air, and seas I know, and all
The joys and horrors of their peace and wars;
And now will see the Gods’ state and the stars.
Greatness in Adversity.