My Sabine farm my one sufficient boon.
(II, xviii, 9.)
Seize the Present! Now bind the brow with late roses and with myrtle crowns; now drown your cares in wine, counting as gain each day that Chance may give (I, vii, 31; I, ix, 14). Pale Death will be here anon; even while I speak time slips away: seize to-day, trust nothing to the morrow.
Ah, my Beloved, fill the cup that clears
To-day of past regrets and future fears:
To-morrow? why to-morrow I may be
Myself with yesterday's seven thousand years.
What more commonplace than this saying that we all must die? but he brings it home to us ever and again with pathetic tearful fascinating force. Each time we read him, his sweet sad pagan music chants its ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and we hear the earth fall upon the coffin lid amongst the flowers.
Ah, Postumus, they fleet away