SHALL

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1162, 22 August 1873, Page 3

SHALL

Thb flat •( nature is inexorable. There is no appeal for relief from the great laws whioh doom us to dost. We flourish and fade as the leaves of the forest, and the flowers tkat bloom and wither in a day have no frailer hold upon life, than the mightiest monarch that ever shook the earth with his footsteps. Generations of men will appear and disappear aa the grass, and the multitude that throngs the earth to*day will disappear as the footsteps on the shore. Men seldom think of the great event of death until the shadow - falls aoross their own pathway, hiding from their eyes the faces of loved ones whose living smile was the sunlight of their existence. Death is the antagonist of life, and the cold thought of the tomb is the skeleton of all feasts.

We do not want to co through the dark valley, although the - dark passage may lead to paradise; we do not want to lay aown in the damp grave, even with princes for bed-fellows. In the 1 beautiful drama of lon, the hope of immortality, Iso eloqnently uttered by the death-devoted Greek, ; finds deop response in every thoughtful soul. When about .to yield his young existence as a sacrifice to fate, his Clemantba asks if they should meet again, to which he replies : "I have asked that dreadful question of the hills that look eternal— of the clear streams that, flow for ever—of the start among whose fields of azure my. raised spirits have walked in glory. All were dumb; bat upon thy livimz faoeUeel there is.something in the love that -mantels through its beauty thaYojuniut--wii<>» 7 -p«ieu. — We shall meet again, Clemantha."—ffeory* J). Prentice. ■ • ■■-.'. ■■■''•>