The spectacle of death is not new
to us nor is the bewailing of poets down the ages. In their utterance at times
even an unearthly dimension is witnessed in the poignancy of heaven itself.
Sorrow and transience in the affairs of men and the world very often turn out
to be an expression of anger or else of total helplessness in the face of the
inexorable.
Inspired lyricism glorifying the
melancholy can be very touching and can also reveal the secret of the process
that is operative in the mystery of this life itself. The cry only tells us
that we are but passing shadows and that the many-coloured stain-glasses we glimpse
under the dome of white Eternity are subject to fragmentation:
The One remains, the many change
and pass;
Heaven's light forever shines,
Earth's shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured
glass,
Stains the white radiance of
Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to
fragments. — Die
If thou wouldst be with that which
thou dost seek! … [1]
Do we accept this as the final
truth of existence in the mortality that is our bane? Can we also assert that
the Shelleyean Bird's enchantment was not born for death? We may be helpless
holy sufferers or men of harsh and cruel worldly dealings; we may enjoy life
and its thousand moods or else prepare ourselves for happinesses in some other
heaven of bliss. But it seems always
Alike for those who for To-Day
prepare,
And those after a To-Morrow stare,
A
Muezzin from the
“Fools! your Reward is neither Here
nor There!” [2]
But who is going to listen to the
voice of wisdom? And after all is it not that that voice is coming from the
References
[1] Adonais, PB Shelley
[2] Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam,
translated by Edward FitzGerald