GLORY MAY NOT LAST.
Oh, let him, who pants for glory's guerdon, Deeming glory all in all, Look and see how wide the heaven expandeth, Earth's enclosing bounds how small!
Shame it is, if your proud-swelling glory May not fill this narrow room! Why, then, strive so vainly, oh, ye proud ones! To escape your mortal doom?
Though your name, to distant regions bruited, O'er the earth be widely spread, Though full many a lofty-sounding title On your house its lustre shed,
Death at all this pomp and glory spurneth When his hour draweth nigh, Shrouds alike th' exalted and the humble, Levels lowest and most high.
Where are now the bones of stanch Fabricius? Brutus, Cato--where are they? Lingering fame, with a few graven letters, Doth their empty name display.
But to know the great dead is not given From a gilded name alone; Nay, ye all alike must lie forgotten, 'Tis not _you_ that fame makes known.
Fondly do ye deem life's little hour Lengthened by fame's mortal breath; There but waits you--when this, too, is taken-- At the last a second death.
VIII.
'But that thou mayst not think that I wage implacable warfare against Fortune, I own there is a time when the deceitful goddess serves men well--I mean when she reveals herself, uncovers her face, and confesses her true character. Perhaps thou dost not yet grasp my meaning. Strange is the thing I am trying to express, and for this cause I can scarce find words to make clear my thought. For truly I believe that Ill Fortune is of more use to men than Good Fortune. For Good Fortune, when she wears the guise of happiness, and most seems to caress, is always lying; Ill Fortune is always truthful, since, in changing, she shows her inconstancy. The one deceives, the other teaches; the one enchains the minds of those who enjoy her favour by the semblance of delusive good, the other delivers them by the knowledge of the frail nature of happiness. Accordingly, thou mayst see the one fickle, shifting as the breeze, and ever self-deceived; the other sober-minded, alert, and wary, by reason of the very discipline of adversity. Finally, Good Fortune, by her allurements, draws men far from the true good; Ill Fortune ofttimes draws men back to true good with grappling-irons. Again, should it be esteemed a trifling boon, thinkest thou, that this cruel, this odious Fortune hath discovered to thee the hearts of thy faithful friends--that other hid from thee alike the faces of the true friends and of the false, but in departing she hath taken away _her_ friends, and left thee _thine_? What price wouldst thou not have given for this service in the fulness of thy prosperity when thou seemedst to thyself fortunate? Cease, then, to seek the wealth thou hast lost, since in true friends thou hast found the most precious of all riches.'