fter death,
bethink thee, that they who shall come hereafter, and with whom thou
[202] wouldst survive by thy great name, will be but as these, whom
here thou hast found so hard to live with. For of a truth, the soul of
him who is aflutter upon renown after death, presents not this aright
to itself, that of all whose memory he would have each one will
likewise very quickly depart, until memory herself be put out, as she
journeys on by means of such as are themselves on the wing but for a
while, and are extinguished in their turn.--Making so much of those
thou wilt never see! It is as if thou wouldst have had those who were
before thee discourse fair things concerning thee.

"To him, indeed, whose wit hath been whetted by true doctrine, that
well-worn sentence of Homer sufficeth, to guard him against regret and
fear.--

Like the race of leaves
The race of man is:--

The wind in autumn strows
The earth with old leaves: then the spring
the woods with new endows.+

Leaves! little leaves!--thy children, thy flatterers, thine enemies!
Leaves in the wind, those who would devote thee to darkness, who scorn
or miscall thee here, even as they also whose great fame shall outlast
them. For all these, and the like of them, are born indeed in the
spring season--Earos epigignetai hore+: and soon a wind hath scattered
them, and thereafter the [203] wood peopleth itself again with another
generation of leaves. And what is common to all of them is but the
littleness of their lives: and yet wouldst thou love and hate, as if
these things should continue for ever. In a little while thine eyes
also will be closed, and he on whom thou perchance hast leaned thyself
be himself a burden upon another.

"Bethink thee often of the swiftness with which the things that are, or
are even now coming to be, are swept past thee: that the very substance
of them is but the perpetual motion of water: that there is almost
nothing which continueth: of that bottomless depth of time, so close at
thy side. Folly! to be lifted up, or sorrowful, or anxious, by reason
of things like these! Think of infinite matter, and thy portion--how
tiny a particle, of it! of infinite time, and thine own brief point
there; of destiny, and the jot thou art in it; and yield thyself
readily to the wheel of Clotho, to spin of thee what web she will.

"As one casting a ball from his hand, the nature of t