Groan so in perpetuity than be cur'd

By the sure physician, Death, who is the key To unbar these locks. My conscience, thou art fetter'd

More than my shanks and wrists. You good
gods, give me

The penitent instrument to pick that bolt,
Then, free for ever!

Cymbeline. Act V, Sc. 4.

+

THE FEAR OF DEATH

OWARDS die many times before their

C deaths;

The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,

It seems to me most strange that men should
fear,

Seeing that death, a necessary end,

Will come when it will come.

TH

Julius Cæsar. Act II, Sc. 2.

HAT we shall die, we know; 'tis but the
time,

And drawing days out, that men stand upon.

Death

Ines

capable

Death
Curing

Fear

The Pangs of

Death

Dante's
Hell

Why, he that cuts off twenty years of life
Cuts off so many years of fearing death.
Grant that, and then is death a benefit.
Julius Cæsar. Act III, Sc. 1.

And the poor beetle, that we tread upon,
In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great
As when a giant dies.

Measure for Measure. Act III, Sc. 1.

Y, but to die, and go we know not where;

About in cold obstruction and to rot;

This sensible warm motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the delighted spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbed ice;
To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendent world; or to be-worse than

worst

Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine, howling, 'tis too horrible!

The weariest and most loathed worldly life
That age, ache, penury and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise

To what we fear of death.

Measure for Measure. Act III, Sc. 1.

HAT life is better, past fearing death,
Than that which lives to fear.

TH

Measure for Measure. Act V, Sc. 1.

EASON thus with life:

RES1 do lose thee, I do lose a thing

If I

That none but fools would keep. A breath thou art,

Servile to all the skyey influences,

That dost this habitation where thou keep'st
Hourly afflict. Merely, thou art death's fool;
For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun,
And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art
not noble;

For all the accommodations that thou bear'st
Are nurs'd by baseness. Thou'rt by no

means valiant;

For thou dost fear the soft and tender fork
Of a poor worm. Thy best of rest is sleep,

Death's
Benefit

Death's
Fool

And that thou oft provok'st; yet grossly

fear'st

Thy death, which is no more.

thyself;

Thou art not

For thou exist'st on many a thousand grains That issue out of dust. Happy thou art not; For what thou hast not, still thou striv'st to get,

And what thou hast, forget'st. Thou art not certain;

For thy complexion shifts to strange effects, After the moon. If thou art rich, thou'rt poor;

For, like an ass whose back with ingots bows, Thou bear'st thy heavy riches but a journey, And death unloads thee. Friend hast thou

none;

For thine own bowels, which do call thee sire, The mere effusion of thy proper loins,

Do corse the gout, serpigo and the rheum, For ending thee no sooner. Thou hast nor youth nor age,

But, as it were, an after-dinner's sleep, Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms

Of palsied Eld; and when thou art old and rich,

Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty,

To make thy riches pleasant. What's yet in

this

That bears the name of life? Yet in this life Lie hid moe thousand deaths; yet death we fear,

That makes these odds all even.

Measure for Measure. Act III, Sc. 1.

That thou so many princes at a shot
So bloodily hast struck?

Hamlet. Act V, Sc. 2.

YOUR worm is your only emperor for diet. We fat all creatures else to fat us, and we fat ourselves for magots. Your fat king

You worm is your

King and Beggar