"'Now no more shall a glad home and a true wife welcome thee, nor darling
children race to snatch thy first kisses and touch thy heart with a sweet
and silent content; no more mayest thou be prosperous in thy doings and a
defence to thine own: alas and woe!' say they, 'one disastrous day has
taken all these prizes of thy life away from thee'--but thereat they do
not add this, 'and now no more does any longing for these things beset
thee.' This did their thought but clearly see and their speech follow,
they would release themselves from great heartache and fear. 'Thou,
indeed, as thou art sunk in the sleep of death, wilt so be for the rest
of the ages, severed from all weary pains; but we, while close by us thou
didst turn ashen on the awful pyre, made unappeasable lamentation, and
everlastingly shall time never rid our heart of anguish.' Ask we then
this of him, what there is that is so very bitter, if sleep and peace be
the conclusion of the matter, to make one fade away in never-ending
grief?

"Thus also men often do when, set at the feast, they hold their cups and
shade their faces with garlands, saying sadly, 'Brief is this joy for
wretched men; soon will it have been, and none may ever after recall it!'
as if this were to be first and foremost of the ills of death, that
thirst and dry burning should waste them miserably, or desire after
anything else beset them. For not even then does any one miss himself and
his life when soul and body together are deep asleep and at rest; for all
we care, such slumber might go on for ever, nor does any longing after
ourselves touch us then, though then those first beginnings through our
body swerve away but a very little from the movements that bring back the
senses when the man starts up and gathers himself out of sleep. Far less,
therefore, must we think death concerns us, if less than nothing there
can be; for a greater sundering in the mass of matter follows upon death,
nor does any one awake and stand, whom the cold stoppage of death once