was without consulting me:
I had not the slightest intimation of what was going on: the debates
in the House of Commons on the American War, or the firing at Bunker's
Hill, disturbed not me: yet I thought this no evil--I neither ate,
drank, nor was merry, yet I did not complain: I had not then looked out
into this breathing world, yet I was well; and the world did quite as
well without me as I did without it! Why, then, should I make all this
outcry about parting with it, and being no worse off than I was before?
There is nothing in the recollection that at a certain time we were not
come into the world that 'the gorge rises at'--why should we revolt at
the idea that we must one day go out of it? To die is only to be as we
were before we were born; yet no one feels any remorse, or regret, or
repugnance, in contemplating this last idea. It is rather a relief and
disburthening of the mind: it seems to have been holiday-time with us
then: we were not called to appear upon the stage of life, to wear
robes or tatters, to laugh or cry, be hooted or applauded; we had lain
_perdus_ all this while, snug, out of harm's way; and had slept out our
thousands of centuries without wanting to be waked up; at peace and free
from care, in a long nonage, in a sleep deeper and calmer than that of
infancy, wrapped in the softest and finest dust. And the worst that we
dread is, after a short, fretful, feverish being, after vain hopes and
idle fears, to sink to final repose again, and forget the troubled dream
of life!... Ye armed men, knights templars, that sleep in the stone
aisles of that old Temple church, where all is silent above, and where
a deeper silence reigns below (not broken by the pealing organ), are ye
not contented where ye lie? Or would you come out of your long homes to
go to the Holy War? Or do ye complain that pain no longer visits you,
that sickness has done its worst, that you have paid the last debt to
nature, that you hear no more of the thickening phalanx of the foe, or
your lady's waning love; and that while this ball of earth rolls its
eternal round, no sound shall ever pierce through to disturb your
lasting repose, fixed as the marble over your tombs, breathless as the
grave that holds you! And thou, oh! thou, to whom my heart turns, and
will turn while it has feeling left, who didst love in vain, and whose
first was thy last sigh, wilt not thou too rest in peace (or wilt thou
cry to me complaining from thy clay-col