Quotes about death

Then to the lip of this poor earthen Urn

I lean'd, the Secret of my Life to learn:

And Lip to Lip it murmur'd — "While you live

Drink! — for, once dead, you never shall return."

When You and I behind the Veil are past,

Oh, but the long, long while the World shall last,

Which of our Coming and Departure heeds

As the Sea's self should heed a pebble-cast.

And fear not lest Existence closing your

Account, and mine, should know the like no more;

The Eternal Saki from that Bowl has pour'd

Millions of Bubbles like us, and will pour.

But if in vain, down on the stubborn floor

Of Earth, and up to Heav'n's unopening Door

You gaze To-day, while You are You — how then

To-morrow, You when shall be You no more?

Why, all the Saints and Sages who discuss'd

Of the Two Worlds so learnedly — are thrust

Like foolish Prophets forth; their Words to Scorn

Are scatter'd, and their Mouths are stopt with Dust.

Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend,

Before we too into the Dust Descend;

Dust into Dust, and under Dust, to lie,

Sans Wine, sans Song, sans Singer and — sans End!

I sometimes think that never blows so red

The Rose as where some buried Cæsar bled;

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears

Dropt in its Lap from some once lovely Head.

And those who husbanded the Golden Grain,

And those who flung it to the Winds like Rain,

Alike to no such aureate Earth are turn'd

As, buried once, Men want dug up again.

Lo! some we loved, the loveliest and the best

That Time and Fate of all their Vintage prest,

Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,

And one by one crept silently to Rest.

I sometimes think that never blows so red

The Rose as where some buried Caesar bled;

That every Hyacinth the Garden wears

Dropt in her Lap from some once lovely Head.

The only way you could keep from getting old was by dying before you made it.

He still couldn't believe she was dead. She’d been one of those fiercely vital people you thought of as going on forever. But life didn't work like that, and war had an obscene power all its own. What it wanted, it took, and an individual’s vitality mattered not at all to it.