He ne'er is crowned with immortality
Who fears to follow where airy voices lead.
I long to believe in immortality. * * *
If I am destined to be happy with you here—
how short is the longest life. I wish to believe
in immortality—I wish to live with you forever.
Men are immortal till their work is done.
David Livingstone—Letter. Describing the death of Bishop Mackenzie in Africa. March, 1862.
And in the wreck of noble lives
Something immortal still survives.
Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution,
She lives, whom we call dead.
I came from God, and I'm going back to God, and I won't have any gaps of death in title middle of my life.
Of such as he was, there be few on earth;
Of such as he is, there are few in Heaven:
And life is all the sweeter that he lived, '
And all be loved more sacred for his sake:
And Death is all the brighter that he died,
And Heaven is all the happier that he's there.
For who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallow'd up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night,
Devoid of sense and motion?
They eat, they drink, and in communion sweet
Quaff immortality and joy.
For spirits that live throughout
Vital in every part, not as frail man,
In entrails, heart or head, liver or reins,
Cannot but by annihilating die.
When the good man yields his breath
(For the good man never dies).
| author = Montgomery
| work = The Wanderer of Switzerland.
| place = Pt. V.
| note =
| topic =
| page = 389
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>Immortality
Alone could teach this mortal how to die.
Tamque opus exegi quod nee Jovis ira necignes
Nec poterit ferrum, nee edax abolere vetustas.
Cum volet ilia dies quae nil nisi corporis hujus
Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi siniat asvi;
Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis
Astra ferar, nomenque erit indelebile nostrum.
And now have I finished a work which neither the wrath of Jove, nor fire, nor steel, nor all-consuming time can destroy. Welcome the day which can destroy only my physical man in ending my uncertain life. In my better part I shall be raised to immortality above the lofty stars, and my name shall never die.
Sunt aliquid Manes: letum non omnia finit.
Luridaque evictos effugit umbra rogos.
There is something beyond the grave; death does not put an end to everything, the dark shade escapes from the consumed pile.
Look, here's the warrant, Claudio, for thy death:
'Tis now dead midnight, and by eight tomorrow
Thou must be made immortal.
I hold it ever,
Virtue and cunning were endowments greater
Than nobleness and riches : careless heirs
May the two latter darken and expend;
But immortality attends the former,
Making a man a god.
And her immortal part with angels lives.
What a world were this,
How unendurable its weight, if they
Whom Death hath sundered did not meet again!
Thy lord shall never die, the whiles this verse
Shall live, and surely it shall live for ever:
For ever it shall live, and shall rehearse
His worthy praise, and vertues dying never,
Though death his soule do from his bodie sever:
And thou thyselfe herein shalt also live;
Such grace the heavens doe to my verses give.
Spenser—The Ruines of Time. L. 253.
I am restless. I am athirst for faraway things.
My soul goes out in a longing to touch the skirt of the dim distance.
Great Beyond, O the keen call of thy flute!
forget, I ever forget, that I have no wings to
fly, that I am bound in this spot evermore.
Rabdjdranath Tagore—Gardener. 5.
Ah, Christ, that it were possible,
For one short hour to see
The souls we loved, that they might tell us
What and where they be.
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
But felt through all this fleshly dresse
Bright shootes of everlastingnesse.
