| 58 |
Now,
therefore, my thought roams beyond the confines of my heart; my mind
roams widely with the ocean tide over the whale's home, over earth's
expanses, and comes back to me avid and covetous; the lone flier calls
and urges the spirit irresistibly along the whale-path over the waters
of oceans, because for me the pleasures of the Lord are more enkindling
than this dead life, this ephemeral life on land. I do not believe
that material riches will last eternally for him. One of three things
will ever become a matter of uncertainty for any man before his last
day: ill-health or old age or the sword's hostile violence will crush
the life from the doomed man in his heedlessness. |
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| 72 |
For
every man, therefore, praise from the living, speaking out afterwards,
is the best of epitaphs: that, before he has to be on his way, he
accomplishes gains against the malice of fiends, brave deeds in the
devil's despite, so that the sons of men may afterwards extol him,
and his praise may endure for ever and ever among the angels, and
the splendour of his eternal life and his pleasure endure among the
celestial hosts. |
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| 80 |
The
days have been slipping away, and all the pomps of the kingdom of
earth. There are not now kings nor emperors nor gold-giving lords
like those that used once to be, when they performed the greatest
deeds of glory among themselves and lived in most noble renown. This
whole company has perished; the pleasures have slipped away. The weaker
remain and occupy the world; in toil they use it. Splendour had been
humbled. Earth's nobility ages and grows sear just as each man now
does throughout the middle-earth. Old age advances upon him, his face
grows pallid, grey-haired he mourns: he is conscious that his former
friends, the sons of princes, have been committed to the earth. Then,
when life fails him, his body will be unable to taste sweetness of
feel pain or stir a hand or think with the mind. Although a brother
may wish to strew the grave with gold for his kinsman, to heap up
by the dead man's side various treasures that he would like to go
with him, the gold he hides in advance while he lives here cannot
be of help to the soul which is full of sins, in the face of God's
awesomeness. |
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