All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
When I consider life, ‘t is all a cheat.
Yet fool’d with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay.
To-morrow ‘s falser than the former day;
Lies worse, and while it says we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possest.
Strange cozenage! none would live past years again,
Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain;
And from the dregs of life think to receive
What the first sprightly running could not give.
John Dryden
Death in itself is nothing; but we fear
To be we know not what, we know not where.
John Dryden
Annie Laurie
Maxwelton’s braes are bonnie,
Where early fa’s the dew,
Twas there that Annie Laurie
Gave me her promise true.
Gave me her promise true –
Which ne’er forgot will be,
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I’d lay me down and dee.
Her brow is like the snow-drift,
Her throat is like the swan,
Her face it is the fairest,
That ‘er the sun shone on.
That ‘er the sun shone on –
And dark blue is her e’e,
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I’d lay me down and dee.
Like dew on gowans lying,
Is the fa’ o’ her fairy feet,
And like winds, in summer sighing,
Her voice is low and sweet.
Her voice is low and sweet –
And she’s a’ the world to me;
And for bonnie Annie Laurie
I’d lay me down and dee.
William Douglas (modified by Alicia Ann Scott)
When God’s hand is bent to strike, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God; but to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination.
John Donne
And what is so intricate, so entangling as death? Who ever got out of a winding sheet?
John Donne
I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.
John Donne
What if this present were the world’s last night?
John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
John Donne
No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lessee, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manner of thy friends or of thine owne were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.
John Donne
If a man be gloomy, let him keep to himself. No one has a right to go croaking about society, or, what is worse, looking as if he stifled grief.
Benjamin Disraeli