Page:Ovid's Metamorphoses (Vol. 2) - tr Garth, Dryden, et. al. (1727).djvu/272

248 Those I wou'd teach; and by right Reason bring To think of Death, as but an idle Thing. Why thus affrighted at an empty Name, A Dream of Darkness, and fictitious Flame? Vain Theams of Wit, which but in Poems pass, And Fables of a World, that never was! What feels the Body, when the Soul expires, By Time corrupted, or consum'd by Fires? Nor dies the Spirit, but new Life repeats In other forms, and only changes Seats. Ev'n I, who these mysterious Truths declare, Was once Euforbus in the Trojan War; My Name, and Lineage I remember well, And how in Fight by Sparta's King I fell. In Argive Juno's Fane I late beheld My Buckler hung on high, and own my former Shield. Then, Death, so call'd, is but old Matter dress'd In some new Figure, and a vary'd Vest: Thus all things are but alter'd, nothing dies; And here, and there th' unbody'd Spirit flies, By Time, or Force, or Sickness dispossest, And lodges, where it lights, in Man or Beast; Or hunts without, 'till ready Limbs it find, And actuates those according to their Kind; From Tenement to Tenement is toss'd, The Soul is still the same, the Figure only lost: And, as the soften'd Wax new Seals receives This Face assumes, and that Impression leaves; Now call'd by one, now by another Name; The Form is only chang'd, the Wax is still the same: So Death, so call'd, can but the Form deface; Th' immortal Soul flies out in empty Space. To seek her Fortune in some other Place, Then let not Piety be put to flight, To please the Taste of Glutton Appetite; But