Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/136

116 the sudden coming of death will admonish me of nothing new. (a) We must be always booted and ready to depart, so far as lies in us, and, above all, look to it that we have no business then except with ourselves.

(b) Quid brevi fortes jaculamur ævo
 * Multa?

(c) For we shall have enough work then without surplusage. One man bewails, more than for death itself, that it breaks off the progress of a glorious victory; another, that he must leave his lodging before he has married his daughter or arranged for the education of his children. One deplores the loss of the company of his wife, another of that of his son, as chief pleasures of his existence. (c) I am at this hour in such a state, God be praised, that I can dislodge whenever it may please him, without regret for anything whatsoever, if it be not for life itself, if its loss begins to be important to me. I am untying myself from all things; my farewells are now said to every one save myself. Never did man prepare to leave this world more wholly and entirely, or to detach himself from it more completely, than I endeavour to do.

Una dies infesta mihi tot præmia vitæ.
 * (b) Miser, o miser, aiunt, omnia ademit

(a) And the builder: —

Murorum ingentes.
 * Manent [he says] opera interrupta minæque

We must not plan any thing requiring so long a breath, or, at