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	sit_v	4,096	5	7.9251	4	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And therefore restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our Memories unto present considerations seems a Vanity almost out of date and a superannuated piece of Folly We cannot hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons one Face of Janus holds no proportion to the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

in a Cloud of Opinions A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world might handsomly illustrate our ignorance of the next whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's Den and are but Embryon Philosophers Pythagoras escape in the fabulous Hell of Dante among that swarm of Philosophers wherein whilest we meet with Plato and Socrates Cato is to be found in no lower place then Purgatory Among all the set Epicurus is most considerable whom men make honest without an Elysium who contemned life without encouragement of Immortality and making nothing after Death yet made nothing of the King of terrours Were the Happiness of the next World as closely apprehended as the Felicities of this it were a Martyrdome to live and unto such as consider none hereafter it must be more then Death to die which makes us amazed at those Audacities that durst be Nothing and return into their Chaos again Certainly such spirits as could contemn Death when they expected no better Being after would have scorned to live had they known any And therefore we applaud not the judgement of Machiavel that Christianity makes men Cowards or that with the confidence of bat half dying the despised Vertues of Patience and Humility have abased the spirits of men which Pagan Principles exalted but rather it hath regulated the wildness of Audacities in the attempts grounds and eternal sequels of Death wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously temerarious Nor can we extenuate the Valour of ancient Martyrs who contemned Death in the uncomfortable scene of their lives and in their decrepit Martyrdomes did probably lose not many months of their days or parted with Life when it was scarce worth the living For beside that long time past holds no consideration unto a slender time to come they had no small disadvantage from the constitution of Old age which naturally makes men fearfull and complexionally superannuated from the bold and couragious thoughts of Youth and fervent years But the contempt of Death from corporal animosity promoteth not our Felicity They may sit in the Orchestra and noblest Seats of Heaven who have held up shaking hands in the Fire and humanely contended for Glory Meanwhile Epicurus lies deep in Dante 's Hell wherein we meet with Tombs enclosing Souls which denied their Immortalities But whether the vertuous Heathen who lived better then he spake or erring in the Principles of himself yet lived above Philosophers of more specious Maximes lie so deep as he is placed at least so low as not to rise against Christians who believing or knowing that Truth have lastingly denied it in their practice and conversation were a Quere too sad to insist on But all or most apprehensions rested in Opinions of some future Being which ignorantly or coldly believed beget those perverted Conceptions Ceremonies Sayings which Christians pity or laugh at Happy are they which live not in that disadvantage of time when men could say little for Futurity but from Reason whereby the noblest mindes fell often upon doubtful Deaths and melancholick Dissolutions With these hopes Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits against that cold Potion and Cato before he durst give the fatal stroak spent part of the night in reading the Immortality of Plato thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the animosity of that attempt It is the heaviest stone that Melancholy can throw at a man to tell him he is at the end of his Nature or that there is no farther State to come unto which this seems progressional and otherwise made in vain Without this accomplishment the natural expectation and desire of such a State were but a fallacy in nature unsatisfied Considerators would quarrel the justice of their Constitutions and rest content that Adam had fallen lower whereby by knowing no other Original and deeper Ignorance of themselves they might have enjoyed the Happiness of inferiour Creatures who in tranquillity possess their Constitutions as having not the apprehension to deplore their own Natures and being framed below the circumference of these Hopes or cognition of better being the Wisedom of God hath necessitated their contentment But the superiour ingredient and obscured part of our selves whereunto all present Felicities afford no resting contentment will be able at last to tell us we are more then our present selves and evacuate such Hopes in the fruition of their own Accomplishments CHAP. V. NOW since these dead Bones have already out-lasted the living ones of Methuselah and in a yard under Ground and thin walls of Clay out-worn all the strong and specious Buildings above it and quietly rested under the Drums and Tramplings of three Conquests what Prince can promise such diuturnity unto his Reliques or might not gladly say Sic ego componi versus in oss a velim Time which antiquates Antiquities and hath an Art to make Dust of all things hath yet spared these minor Monuments In vain we hope to be known by open and visible Conservatories when to be unknown was the means of their Continuation and obscurity their Protection If they died by violent hands and were thrust into their Urns these Bones became considerable and some old Philosophers would honour them whose Souls they conceived most pure which were thus snatched from their Bodies and to retain a stronger propension unto them whereas they weariedly left alanguishing Corps and with faint desires of Re-union If they fell by long and aged decay yet wrapt up in the bundle of Time they fell into indistinction and made but one blot with Infants If we begin to die when we live and long life be but a prolongation of death our Life is a sad composition we live with Death and die not in a moment How many Pulses made up the life of Methuselah were work for Archimedes Common Counters sum up the life of Moses his name Our days become considerable like petty sums by minute accumulations where numerous Fractions make up but small round Numbers and our days of a Span long make not one little Finger If the nearness of our last necessity brought a nearer conformity unto it there were a happiness in Hoary hairs and no calamity in Half senses But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying when Avarice makes us the sport of Death when David grew politickly Cruel and Solomon could hardly be said to be the Wisest of men But many are too early old and before the date of age Adversity stretcheth our days Misery makes Almena's nights and Time hath no wings unto it But the most tedious being is that which can unwish it self content to be nothing or never to have been which was beyond the Male-content of Job who cursed not the day of his Life but his Nativity content to have so far been as to have a title to future being although he had lived here but in an hidden state of life and as it were an Abortion What Song the Sirens