Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was white as leprosy, The Nightmare Life-in-Death was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold.
Now it is autumn and the falling fruit
and the long journey towards oblivion.
The apples falling like great drops of dew
to bruise themselves an exit from themselves.
How gladly would I meet mortality, my sentence, and be earth in sensible! How glad would lay me down, as in my mother's lap! There I should rest, and sleep secure.
I see Hermes, unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying to the people, "Do not weep for me, This is not my true country, I have lived banished from my true country - I now go back there, I return to the celestial sphere where every one goes in his turn."
Every man at time of Death,
Would fain set forth some saying that may live
After his death and better humankind;
For death gives life's last word a power to live,
And, lie the stone-cut epitaph, remain
After the vanished voice, and speak to men.
This is the fear: death will come and we have not lived yet. We are just preparing to live. Nothing is ready; life has not happened. We have not known the ecstasy which life is; we have not known the bliss life is; we have not known anything. We have just been breathing in and out. We have been just existing. Life has been just a hope and death is coming near. And if life has not yet happened and death happens before it, of course, obviously, we will be afraid because we would not like to die.
Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.
There are flood and drought over the eyes and in the mouth, dead water and dead sand contending for the upper hand. The parched eviscerate soil gapes at the vanity of toil, laughs without mirth. This is the death of the earth.