Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	darkness_n	light_n	see_v	5,466	5	4.4126	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29860	Hydriotaphia, urn-burial, or, A discours of the sepulchral urns lately found in Norfolk together with the Garden of Cyrus, or, The quincuncial lozenge, or network of plantations of the ancients, artificially, naturally, mystically considered : with sundry observations / by Thomas Browne.	Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.	1669 (1669)	Wing B5155; ESTC R35415	73,609	80

sang or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among Women though puzzling Questions are not beyond all conjecture What time the persons of these Ossuaries entred the famous Nations of the dead and slept with Princes and Counsellors might admit a wide Solution But who were the proprietaries of these Bones or what Bodies these Ashes made up were a question above Antiquarism not to be resolved by man nor easily perhaps by Spirits except we consult the Provincial Guardians or Tutelary Observators Had they made as good provision for their Names as they have done for their Reliques they had not so grossly erred in the art of Perpetuation But to subsist in Bones and be but pyramidally extant is a fallacy in Duration Vain Ashes which in the oblivion of Names Persons Times and Sexes have found unto themselves a fruitless Continuation and onely arise unto late Posterity as Emblems of mortal Vanities Antidotes against Pride Vain-glory and madding Vices Pagan Vain-glories which thought the World might last for ever had encouragement for Ambition and finding no Atropos unto the immortality of their Names were never dampt with the necessity of Oblivion Even old Ambitions had the advantage of ours in the attempts of their Vain-glories who acting early and before the probable Meridian of Time have by this time found great accomplishment of their Designs whereby the ancient Heroes have already out-lasted their Monuments and Mechanical Preservations But in this latter Scene of Time we cannot expect such Mummies unto our Memories when Ambition may fear the Prophecie of Elias and Charles the fifth can never hope to live within two Methuselah's of Hector And therefore restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our Memories unto present considerations seems a Vanity almost out of date and a superannuated piece of Folly We cannot hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons one Face of Janus holds no proportion to the other 'T is too late to be Ambitious The great Mutations of the World are acted or time may be too short for our Designs To extend our Memories by Monuments whose death we daily pray for and whose duration we cannot hope without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last Day were a contradiction to our Beliefs We whose Generations are ordained in this setting part of Time are providentially taken off from such imaginations and being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of Futurity are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next World and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that Duration which maketh Pyramids Pillars of snow and all that 's past a Moment Circles and Right lines limit and close all Bodies and the mortal right-lined Circle must conclude and shut up all There is no Antidote against the Opium of Time which temporally considereth all things Our Fathers finde their Graves in our short Memories and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our Survivors Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years Generations pass while some Trees stand and old Families last not three Oaks To be read by bare Inscriptions like many in Gruter to hope for Eternity by AEnigmatical Epithets or first letters of our Names to be studied by Antiquaries who we were and have new Names given us like many of the Mummies are cold Consolations unto the Students of Perpetuity even by everlasting Languages To be content that Times to come should onely know there was such a man not caring whether they knew more of him was a frigid Ambition in Cardan disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgement of himself Who cares to subsist like Hippocrates's Patients or Achilles's Horses in Homer under naked Nominations without Deserts and noble acts which are the balsame of our Memories the Entelechia and Soul of our Subsistences To be nameless in worthy deed exceeds an infamous History The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name then Herodias with one And who had not rather have been the good Thief then Pilate But the iniquity of Oblivion blindly scattereth her Poppy and deals with the Memory of men without distinction to merit of Perpetuity Who can but pity the Founder of the Pyramids Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana he is almost lost that built it Time hath spared the Epitaph of Adrian's Horse confounded that of himself In vain we compute our Felicities by the advantage of our good Names since bad have equal durations and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon without the favour of the everlasting Register Who knows whether the best of men be known or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot then any that stand remembred in the known account of Time The first man had been as unknown as the last and Methuselah's long life had been his onely Chronicle Oblivion is not to be hired The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been to be found in the Register of God not in the Record of Man Twenty seven names make up the first Story and the recorded names ever since contain not one living Century The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live The Night of Time far surpasseth the Day and who knows when was the Aequinox Every hour adds unto that current Arithmetick which scarce stands one moment And since Death must be the Lucina of Life and even Pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die since our longest Sun sets at right descensions and makes but Winter Arches and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in Darkness and have our light in Ashes since the Brother of Death daily haunts us with dying Memento's and Time that grows old it self bids us hope no long Duration Diuturnity is a Dream and folly of expectation Darkness and Light divide the course of Time and Oblivion shares with Memory a great part even of our living Beings we slightly remember our Felicities and the smartest stroaks of Affliction leave but short smart upon us Sense endureth no extremities and Sorrows destroy us or themselves To weep into Stones are Fables Afflictions induce callosities Miseries are slippery or fall like Snow upon us which notwithstanding is no Stupiditie To be ignorant of evils to come and forgetfull of evils past is mercifull provision in Nature whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days and our delivered Senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances our Sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions A great part of Antiquity contented their hopes of subsistency with a Transmigration of their Souls A good way to continue their Memories while having the advantage of plural successions they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of Beings and enjoying the fame of their passed selves make accumulation of glory unto their last Durations Others rather then be lost in the uncomfortable night of Nothing were content to recede into the

Yew and Trees perpetually verdant lay silent expressions of their surviving Hopes wherein Christians which deck their Coffins with Bays have found a more elegant Embleme For that Tree seeming dead will restore it self from the Root and its dry and exsuccous Leaves resume their verdure again which if we mistake not we have also observed in Furze Whether the planting of Yew in Church-yards hold not its original from ancient Funeral-Rites or as an Embleme of Resurrection from its perpetual Verdure may also admit conjecture They made use of Musick to excite or quiet the Affections of their Friends according to different Harmonies But the secret and symbolical hint was the Harmonical nature of the Soul which delivered from the Body went again to enjoy the primitive Harmony of Heaven from whence it first descended which according to its progress traced by Antiquity came down by Cancer and ascended by Capricornus They burnt not Children before their Teeth appeared as apprehending their Bodies too tender a morsel for Fire and that their gristly Bones would scarce leave separable Reliques after the pyral Combustion That they kindled not Fire in their houses for some days after was a strict memorial of the late afflicting Fire And mourning without hope they had an happy fraud against excessive Lamentation by a common opinion that deep Sorrows disturbed their Ghosts That they buried their dead on their Backs or in a supine position seems agreeable unto profound Sleep and common posture of dying contrary to the most natural way of Birth nor unlike our pendulous posture in the doubtful state of the Womb. Diogenes was singular who preferred a prone situation in the Grave and some Christians like neither who declined the figure of Rest and made choice of an erect posture That they carried them out of the world with their Feet forward was not inconsonant unto Reason as contrary unto the native posture of Man and his production first into it and also agreeable unto their Opinions while they bid adieu unto the world not to look again upon it whereas Mahometans who think to return to a delightful life again are carried forth with their Heads forward and looking towards their houses They closed their Eyes as parts which first die or first discover the sad effects of Death But their iterated Clamations to excitate their dying or dead Friends or revoke them unto life again was a vanity of Affection as not presumably ignorant of the critical Tests of Death by apposition of Feathers Glasses and reflexion of Figures which dead Eyes represent not which how-ever not strictly verifiable in fresh and warm Cadavers could hardly elude the Test in Corps of four or five days That they sucked in the last Breath of their expiring Friends was surely a practice of no medical Institution but a loose opinion that the Soul passed out that way and a fondness of Affection from some Pythagorical foundation that the Spirit of one Body passed into another which they wished might be their own That they poured Oyl upon the Pyre was a tolerable practice while the intention rested in facilitating the Ascension But to place good Omens in the quick and speedy Burning to sacrifice unto the Winds for a dispatch in this office was a low form of Superstition The Archimime or Jester attending the Funeral Train and imitating the speeches gesture and manners of the deceased was too light for such Solemnities contradicting their funeral Orations and dolefull Rites of the Grave That they buried a piece of Money with them as a Fee of the Elysian Ferryman was a practice full of folly But the ancient custome of placing Coyns in considerable Urns and the present practice of burying Medals in the noble Foundations of Europe are laudable ways of Historical discoveries in Actions Persons Chronologies and posterity will applaud them We examine not the old Laws of Sepulture exempting certain persons from Burial or Burning But hereby we apprehend that these were not the Bones of persons Planet-struck or burnt with fire from Heaven no Reliques of Traitors to their Countrey Self-killers or Sacrilegious malefactors persons in old apprehension unworthy of the Earth condemned unto the Tartarus of Hell and bottomless pit of Pluto from whence there was no redemption Nor were onely many Customes questionable in order to their Obsequies but also sundry Practices Fictions and Conceptions discordant or obscure of their state and future beings Whether unto eight or ten Bodies of Men to adde one of a Woman as being more inflammable and unctuously constituted for the better pyrall Combustion were any rational practice or whether the complaint of Periander's Wife be tolerable that wanting her Funeral Burning she suffered intolerable cold in Hell according to the constitution of the Infernal house of Pluto wherein Cold makes a great part of their Tortures it cannot pass without some question Why the Female-Ghosts appear unto Ulysses before the Heroes and masculine spirits why the Psyche or Soul of Tiresias is of the masculine gender who being blinde on Earth sees more then all the rest in Hell why the Funeral Suppers consisted of Eggs Beans Smallage and Lettuce since the dead are made to eat Asphodels about the Elysian meadows why since there is no Sacrifice acceptable nor any Propitiation for the Covenant of the Grave men set up the Deity of Morta and fruitlesly adored Divinites without Ears it cannot escape some doubt The dead seem all alive in the humane Hades of Homer yet cannot they speak prophesie or know the living except they drink Bloud wherein is the Life of man And therefore the Souls of Penelope's Paramours conducted by Mercury chirped like Bats and those which followed Hercules made a noise but like a flock of Birds The departed Spirits know things past and to come yet are ignorant of things present Agamemnon foretells what should happen unto Ulysses yet ignorantly enquires what is become of his own Son The Ghosts are afraid of Swords in Homer yet Sibylla tells Aeneas in Virgil the thin habit of Spirits was beyond the force of Weapons The Spirits put off their Malice with their Bodies and Caesar and Pompey accord in Latine Hell yet Ajax in Homer endures not a Conference with Ulysses And Deiphobus appears all mangled in Virgil's Ghosts yet we meet with perfect Shadows among the wounded Ghosts of Homer Since Charon in Lucian applauds his condition among the dead whether is it handsomely said of Achilles that living contemner of Death that he had rather be a Plowman's servant then Emperour of the dead How is Hercules his Soul in Hell and yet in Heaven and Julius his Soul in a Star yet seen by Aeneas in Hell except the Ghosts were but Images and Shadows of the Soul received in higher mansions according to the ancient division of Body Soul and Image or Simulachrum of them both The particulars of future Beings must needs be dark unto ancient Theories which Christian Philosophy yet determines but