Page:Devotions - Donne - 1840.djvu/151

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

young man's back, and says nothing; age is a sickness, and youth is an ambush; and we need so many physicians as may make up a watch, and spy every inconvenience. There is scarce any thing that hath not killed somebody; a hair, a feather hath done it; nay, that which is our best antidote against it hath done it; the best cordial hath been deadly poison. Men have died of joy, and almost forbidden their friends to weep for them, when they have seen them die laughing. Lven that tyrant, Dionysius (I think the same that suffered so much after), who could not die of that sorrow, of that high fall, from a king to a wretched private man, died of so poor a joy, as to be declared by the people at a theatre, that he was a good poet. We say often, that a man may live of a little; but, alas, of how much less may a man die? And therefore the more assistants the better; who comes to a day of hearing, in a cause of any importance, with one advocate 7 In our funerals, we ourselves have no interest; there we cannot advise, we cannot direct: and though some nations (the Egyptians in particular) built themselves better tombs than houses, because they were to dwell longer in them; yet, amongst ourselves, the greatest man of style whom we have had, the Conqueror, was left, as soon as his soul left him, not only without persons to assist at his grave, but without a grave. 'Who will keep us then, we kuow not; as long as we can, let us admit as much help as we can; another and another physician, is not another and another indication, and symptom of death, but another and another assistant, and protector of life: nor do they so much feed the imagination with apprehension of danger, as the understanding with comfort. Let not one bring learning, another diligence, another religion, but every one bring all; and as many ingredients enter into a receipt, so may