THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XXXI, Issue 8435, 1 August 1911, Page 6

THOUGHTS FOR THE DAY.

On Death.

The world's an inn, and death the journey's end. —Dryden. Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark.-—Bacon. Our years are fleet, And, to the weary, death is sweet. —Longfellow. Death is* a necessary part of the great system of life. The death of individuals constitutes the life of the whole, and to-suppress death would be to suppress the world. What a strange delicious amazement, is Death, '' . . -■,•'.. .; . ' •,. .■■' ;v\; ■.■■■|:\ To be; without body, and breathe without ■"' breath. ; ■■■■.- '■ ■ ■ ' —Sir Edwin Arnold. It is curious how, forgetful we are of death, how little we think that we are dying daily, and that what we call life is really death, and death the-begiu- ! ning of a higher'life I.—Max Muller. Nothing is dead, but that which wished to die; :, Nothing is dead, but wretchedness and pain; ': ; Nothing is dead, but what encumbered, galled, Blocked up the pass, and.barred from real life. : —Young.

I have died already and" survived a death; I have seen the grass 'grow rankly on my grave; I have heard the train of mourners come weeping and go laughing away again. And when I was alone there in the kirkyard, and the birds began to grow familiar with the gravestone;. I have begun to laugh also, and laughed and laughed until night flowers came out above me.—-R. L. Stevenson. "

There is no death ! What seems so is "' transition ; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian, Whose portal we call death. —Longfellow. Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me ! And may there be no moaning of the bar When, I put to sea. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark ! And may • there be no- sadness of fare- :■■;. •■■..wflii:::-. .' ..' „/. ■ ' ■ , ...v;: ■ When I embark. '""■'■■;■■'■ ' • —Tennyson. Strange, is it not, that of the myriads who ' Before us passed the door of Darkness through Not one returns to tell us of the Road Which to discover we must travel too ? —Omar Khayyam.