Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/218

 206 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE ' After this my father was seized with a fatal attack of diarrhoea. When he saw that death was near he resigned himself, recommended my mother to my care, and enjoined me to lead a good, God-fearing life. He received the sacraments and died in the year 1502. Oh, my dear friends, all of you, I beg you for God's sake when you read of my father's death to say a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria for him, and for your own soul's sake, that we may serve God by a good life and earn a happy death ! It is impossible that anyone who leads a pious life should have a bad end, for God is full of mercy.' Dlirer expresses the same sentiments in a little poem on Death, illustrated with a woodcut, which he pub- lished as a leaflet in 1510: ' He who thinks daily on death God will look on him with mercy. He enjoys that peace which God alone, and not the world, can give. He who does good in life finds strength in the hour of death, which he hails as the bearer of eternal bliss.' Wer taglich sich zum Sterben schickt, Pen hat Gott gnadig angeblickt ; Er steht in rechten Friedens Bann, Den Gott nur, die Welt nicht geben kann ; Dem wer iin Leben Gutes thut, Den iiberkoinmt ein starker Muth, Und ihn erfreut des Todes Stund, Da ihm die Seligkeit wird kund. 1 Very touching is his intimation to his friends of his mother's death : ' Now be it known to you that in the year 1513 my dear suffering mother, whom I took to my home two years after the death of my father (for she was very poor), and who lived with us for nine years, was 1 Thausing, pp. 154-159. See vols, xiv.-xv. Diirer placed a sum of money in the city treasury for an annual mass to be said at St. Sebald's (Baader, pp. 1-6).