Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	body_n	soul_n	union_n	6,110	5	9.7698	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A58883	Severall witty discourses, pro & con viz. 1. That beauty is no real good. 2. That love proceeds from the inclination. 3. That the countrey life is preferr'd before living in cities. 4. That the affection ought not to die with the beloved. 5. That the affection ought not to go beyond the grave. 6. That those who never suffer'd troubles, cannot truly tell what pleasure is. 7. That death is better than slavery. 8. That absence is worse than death. 9. That one may be both slave and mistresse. By Mounsieur Scudery. And put into English by a person of quality.; Femmes illustres. English. Selections.	Scudéry, Madeleine de, 1607-1701.	1661 (1661)	Wing S2161A; ESTC R203500	88,648	236

command you The effect of this HARANGUE THis fair and unhappy Princesse drew the tears of all the Grecians Pyrrhus himself was moved nor could his eyes behold the crime which his hand committed He struck her nevertheless barbarous man that he was and that young and deplorable creature had so much modesty that even in falling struck with the deadly blow she was careful to lay her hands upon her lower garments for fear lest after her death some indecent action should offend her modesty PENELOPE TO LAERTES The Eighth HARANGUE The Argument PENELOPE that vertuous wife to ULISSES whose reputation yet lives after so many ages past and who from the borders of that seldome frequented Island where she lived has made her renown spread over the whole world finding her self one day extreamly afflicted for the absence of her Husband who after the siege of Troy had strayed almost ten years at the mercy of the windes and waves without possibility of seeing his Countrey would ease her sorrowes by her plaints and make her dear Husbands Father acknowledge by the discourse you are now going to see That absence is worse than death PENELOPE TO LAERTES HE that undertakes to maintain that death is the most sensible and greatest of all evils is surely such a one as either never loved at all or at least hath never undergone the unhappinesse of being absent from the person beloved No my Lord that monster which desolates all the earth who by the succession of time changes the face of the whole Universe who treats alike both vice and vertue who strikes with the same fatal dart the Kings and Shepherds and whose very portraiture alone fills the stoutest soul with horrour and amazement is not yet that thing which I believe we ought the most to apprehend Absence which we may truly say is the commencement of all sorrowes and the end of all joyes hath in it somewhat that is more harsh and insupportable for if the first be that which destroyes our prosperity the second is that which makes us unhappy even in the midst of abundance yea on the Throne it self There is neverthelesse a great deal of difference betwixt them for death ravishes equally from us both our felicities and misfortunes if it rob us of any flowers it does not leave us the prickles behind them it crushes with the same hand both our Crowns and fetters and in a word when it deprives us of life it likewise utterly extinguishes in our hearts all the flames of love and anger all the resentments of hatred vengeance and in fine all other passions It causes I say both our joy and trouble to expire together at the same moment whereas absence not onely robs us of all the good that ever death deprives us of but likewise causes all those evils to fall on us to which the other puts a sudden period Our life it self in this occasion is left us but onely to make us the more sensible of the most piercing pain that can be felt and if there be sometimes such people who prefer the absence of the beloved person rather than death 't is because they suffer themselves to be deluded by false appearances t is because that mournful dress in which it is represented affrights them t is because they contemplate it more with their bodily sight than the eyes of the soul t is because they only consider it in what is most terrible and t is in fine because they love themselves better than they doe their Mistresses and prefer the rayes of the Sun above the lustre of her eyes and had rather not see her at all than be deprived of their sight Ha! how ignorant those people are of the true sentiments which love inspires But you will say to me my Lord perhaps you do not seriously consider how great that violence must needs be which separates so close an union as that of soul and body But I shall answer you you do not truly consider your self what a greater violence that must be which for a long season separates that which love reason and inclination seem to have joyned with an eternal and immortal chain Death sage Laertes as you know better than my self is as natural to us as life if it be an evil 't is at least an evil that should not surprize us as soon as we begin to live we ought to begin to learn to die at the first opening of our eyes we should already look on the opening of our graves and every Monarch in the world that hath not renounced common sence cannot be ignorant that as he mounts up to his Throne so he shall once descend into his sepulchre T is not thus in the things of love that passion being altogether divine seizes so imperiously on those whom she possesses and the sight of the beloved person does so absolutely fill all the soul of her adorer that this absence is an evil which still surprizes him and comes so unawares that by consequence it renders him more unhappy than death can which we ought alwayes to expect That amazing instant which parts two persons perfectly loving one another is a sadnesse beyond my expression though I have proved it more cruelly than any other but to make you in some manner comprehend it Imagine to your self my Lord that you were ambitious and that your Crown were torn from you imagine your self were extreamly covetous and that your treasures were all stoln from you imagine you were victorious and that your victory were ravished out of your hands imagine you were shakled with chains whose very weight were insupportable imagine you lost all that is dear to you in the world imagine you were deprived of the light of the day and that you remained in horrid darknesse imagine your heart were torn forth of your bosome and you not yet dead and imagine in fine that I not onely suffered all these pains but that even death how terrible so ' ere it be was the utmost of all my wishes at that sad moment of Ulisses departure Ha! my Lord yet once more how grievous that funest minute was to me death is rather the lulling asleep of all our troubles than any sensible evil and it has nothing trouble some but the way that leads to it But absence is a chain of misfortunes which finds no end but at the end of our lives or the return of the beloved person The first sigh which death does make us breath hath alwayes the advantage of being the last but the first which absence obliges us unto is followed with so many others and accompanied with so many tears so many disturbances so many torments or to speak better so many deaths that its evill suffers no comparison and then to speak rationally death and absence may be taken for one another since both the one and the other equally deprives us of all that we can love but as t is impossible that the loss of all the riches in the

command can accustome her self to obey Do you believe when you treat me thus that I can see it and live Do you believe I am destitute of courage as you are of reason and pitie Do you believe your fetters can enchain the soul as they do the bodie or that a generous stab cannot free me from this slaverie and your Tyrannie Ha! if you believe thus how little do you know your own cruelties and how ill are you acquainted with Briseis how little do you conceive what death is or how little do you confider what I suffer Though it should present it self to my sight in all that funest bloudie equipage which the most barbarous Tyrant can dress it withall though I should meet it accompanied with executioners with scourges and with flames though there were new tortures invented to please you and to afflict me withall I should yet prefer all these before the miserable condition I am now in and should sooner resolve to suffer them all than to suffer your outrages and disdain for in fine one may be both Captive and Mistris bur one cannot remain a captive without being Mistris after the once having had the glorie of being so I could have lived without that glorie but I cannot live and lose it I could have resolved to have lived in your chains but I cannot resolve now to return to them again I could have indured the anger of my Conquerour but I cannot indure the disdain of my lover I could then have remembred that I was your slave but now I cannot forget that you have mine in a word you may be barbarous and inconstant but I cannot be insensible and have no resentment O cruel and unreasonable Achilles are you not also cruel enough to believe that I should be yet too much honoured in serving the new and fairer object of your flames have you not so much blindness as to hope that I shall become her captive as you say I am yours do you not expect from my complacence and willingnesse that I should take the care to chuse her an habit that may adorn her and the pains to curl her hair to imbroider her head-attire with jewels and to indeavour besides to adde new graces to those she received at her birth that thereby art may finish in her that which nature has so gloriously begun will you not have me extol her perfections tell you of her charmes make you remark the lustre of her eies the pureness of her skin and beauteous face thereby to increase your affection and your delight together will you not afterwards make me goe and entertain that faire Phrigian of the rare qualities that are in you must I not vaunt of your courage and speak to her of your skill and above all value your constancy which I know so well that so I may inkindle her soule with the bright flame which consumes yours But will you not have me tell her to prove your valour that you have besieged Troy that you have vanquisht the Trojans a thousand times and that you took away her brothers life Will you not have me declare aloud your liberality when you took money for Hectors corps and your civility when you threatened Priam who came to your Tents to demand it of you O barbarous man that you are are those your intents but ô faint-hearted as I am my selfe am I not ashamed of what I do and should I not blush since contrary to my designe and first dicourse my verie anger it selfe is become a token of my passion or rather of my errour No no do not listen to me any more neither listen to love who speaks to you even as I do nor to reason which sayes the same that love does Be gone since you will goe and passe from this Camp to the other where glorie waits for you as well as Polixena Leave your ancient friends and runne to the imbraces of those whom you have fought withall and whom you ought to fight withall again forget the interest of your own Nation and lose all even to your very honour to behold your Mistris againe look upon Briseis tears with smiles and scoffe at her troubles if at least her troubles doe not provoke your anger Joyn her chains to Hectors armes and carry both the one and the others to that Trojans feet and in fine goe and marrie an unworthie sister upon the tombe of her most generous brother You will have it so and Fate will have it so likewise and although I would not if I could help it yet I must needs consent to it for who can withstand Fate and Achilles his obstinacy But remember cruel and blinde as you are that a God hath told you by my mouth yes I swear that I feel a God inspiring what I now tell you that you shall finde hatred where you hope to meet with love that you shall have nothing but regret where you expected nothing but pleasure that you shall be betrayed by the Trojans as you now betray the Grecians that they shall have as much craft as you have simplicity that if Polixena do wait for you death does wait for you also neer her that if you approach neer Troy your fatal houre does approach likewise that the first day of that fatall Marriage shall be the last of your dayes and that your death must quickly make me die Behold what Heaven has inspir'd me with and this is that which you ought to believe this is that which you will not believe and this is that insensible and mad man which will be the cause both of your ruine and mine Just Gods he hears me no more he is going the power of his destiny drags him away I shall behold him no more nor shall he ' ere see me again he leaves me he is going to die and I my self am going to die likewise The effect of this HARANGUE THe unfortunate Briseis obtained nothing of the pitilesse Achilles but her prediction was not untrue He went to see Polixena that he might see the day no longer and every one knows that one of Paris's arrows sent him to his grave for not having believed this lovely slave who without doubt deserved to be together both Slave and Mistris FINIS

Imagine then the trouble that this thought excited in my heart it was so great that if the fear of Ulysses death in so dangerous a voyage had not moderated its violence I believe I should have accused him in my thoughts as if he had been already guilty I should have made him some reproaches and perhaps for some instants should have hated him But the consideration of the perils he was going to expose himself unto did no sooner come into my mind but that tumult was appeased but I was not the less unhappy for all this since there is no danger which I did not apprehend for him and which by consequence I did not undergo I imagined that I beheld him ready to make ship-wrack I beheld him in the combats I beheld him wounded I saw him a prisoner I beheld him ready to expire and I think truly that the onely fear of his death had made me die if hope more to make me suffer than to ease me had not preserved my life I hoped then my Lord but to say truly 't was so feebly and with so much uncertainty that that hope was rather a trouble than an help unto me That ill founded hope had no sooner inspired my heart with some pleasing thought but presently my fear quenched it again if the one made me imagine Ulisses returned victorious the other persctaded me he might be then perishing in the waves if one made me behold the harbour the other shewed me nothing but tempests and wracks in fine I alwayes thought him either inconstant or dead and the successive raign of two such contrary sentiments tyrannized so fiercely in my soul that to be in a condition not to fear any more nor to be flattered again with hope I wished more than an hundred times for death You may know from thence if I do not deceive my self that absence is more to be feared than that since t is desired as a remedy for those evils which this last makes us suffer Truly my Lord they are so great and so sensible that if it were possible to comprehend that there could be a sharper pain or a greater misfortune than the death of the beloved person we might yet say that such a losse caused lesse affliction than the torment of an absence whose duration is incertain Yes my Lord those which do not love their husbands so well as to follow them into their graves and who have courage enough or to say better insensibility enough to suffer that separation without despairing have more rest than I have they have this advantage to know that they are unhappy alone and that those whom they mourn are at quiet they fear neither their inconstancy nor their death which is already happened nor can they any more apprehend ought either from that pitiless monster nor from inconstant fortune since there remains no more for them to lose but their own life which is no longer pleasing to them But what do I say insensible as I am No no my Lord do not give ear to what my sorrow makes me speak nor believe that I could ever prefer the death of my dearest Ulysses before his absence how rigorous so'ere it is unto me May he live and may he also live happy though distant from his Penelope rather than I should hear that he lives no more I had rather never behold him than to behold him die and I had rather hear he were inconstant than to hear of the end of his life O heaven to what a strange necessity do you reduce me to make wishes against my self Now my Lord is not absence worse than death and have I not reason to say that I am the most unhappy person of all my sex those that die have this sad consolation in losing their lives that they may consider that from the beginning of ages all men have undergone what they do and as long as the world shall last all those that are born must undergo the very same but of all the Grecian Princesses whose husbands have followed Menelaus I am the only she that have heard no news of mine I am the onely she that yet doth sigh I am the only she that have no share in the publick joy and the onely she alone that dares not prepare Crowns not knowing whether those Crowns should be made of Lawrel or of Cypress branches The victory has been woful only to me alone and Polixena yea Hecuba her self though the unhappiest amongst the Trojans are not yet so unhappy as poor Penelope The first died with constancy and by consequence with glory and the last had at least this advantage that she could weep over the bodies of her children and revenge the death of her son whereas I weep and do not know what object my tears should have Perhaps alas thinking onely to weep for the absence of my dear Ulysses I am obliged to weep for his inconstancy or it may be for his death For my Lord how can I think him living and not criminal since he does not come he knowes he is King of this Island and that his subjects have need of him he knowes you are his Father and that you wish for his return he knows Telemachus is his son and that he desires to know him he being so young when he departed that time has effaced the memory of him he knowes in fine that Penelope is his wife and that upon that happy return depends all her felicity nevertheless it is now almost twenty years since he went it is neer ten years since the Grecians conquered and yet we do not know whether we should bemoan him as unhappy or guilty However it be 't is certain that I have cause to complain and to despair on what side so'ere I turn I still finde new subjects of sorrow your old age afflicts me my sons green years disquiets me those that would comfort me increase my troubles those which bear no part with me in my woes anger me and both the discourses of the one and the silence of the others are equally insupportable to me But that which nevertheless is the most cruel to me is that neither time nor affliction hath sullied that little beauty on my face which hereaofore charmed Ulysses 't is not but that if I must see him again I shall be joyful to have preserved it but in the condition I am I finde that t is shameful to me to be yet able to make any conquests Nevertheless you are not ignorant what a number of importunate persons do persecute me though I despise them for my part I am in doubt whether I ought to hide from them my person or my tears for to say truth I think verily I have now no other amability nor any thing worthy of esteem but only my excessive regrets and sorrow for the absence of my dearest Husband and yet Helena hardly ever had more slaves than I have captives though Helena and Penelope are persons very different and although