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Read Online Textbook Beginning Spring Boot 3 2Nd Edition Siva Prasad Reddy Katamreddy K Siva Prasad Reddy Ebook All Chapter PDF
Read Online Textbook Beginning Spring Boot 3 2Nd Edition Siva Prasad Reddy Katamreddy K Siva Prasad Reddy Ebook All Chapter PDF
Death, old age, are words without a meaning, that pass by us like the
idle air which we regard not. Others may have undergone, or may
still be liable to them—we ‘bear a charmed life,’ which laughs to
scorn all such sickly fancies. As in setting out on a delightful journey,
we strain our eager gaze forward——
‘Bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail,’—
Well might the poet begin his indignant invective against an art,
whose professed object is its destruction, with this animated
apostrophe to life. Life is indeed a strange gift, and its privileges are
most miraculous. Nor is it singular that when the splendid boon is
first granted us, our gratitude, our admiration, and our delight
should prevent us from reflecting on our own nothingness, or from
thinking it will ever be recalled. Our first and strongest impressions
are taken from the mighty scene that is opened to us, and we very
innocently transfer its durability as well as magnificence to
ourselves. So newly found, we cannot make up our minds to parting
with it yet and at least put off that consideration to an indefinite
term. Like a clown at a fair, we are full of amazement and rapture,
and have no thoughts of going home, or that it will soon be night. We
know our existence only from external objects, and we measure it by
them. We can never be satisfied with gazing; and nature will still
want us to look on and applaud. Otherwise, the sumptuous
entertainment, ‘the feast of reason and the flow of soul,’ to which
they were invited, seems little better than a mockery and a cruel
insult. We do not go from a play till the scene is ended, and the lights
are ready to be extinguished. But the fair face of things still shines
on; shall we be called away, before the curtain falls, or ere we have
scarce had a glimpse of what is going on? Like children, our step-
mother Nature holds us up to see the raree-show of the universe; and
then, as if life were a burthen to support, lets us instantly down
again. Yet in that short interval, what ‘brave sublunary things’ does
not the spectacle unfold; like a bubble, at one minute reflecting the
universe, and the next, shook to air!—To see the golden sun and the
azure sky, the outstretched ocean, to walk upon the green earth, and
to be lord of a thousand creatures, to look down giddy precipices or
over distant flowery vales, to see the world spread out under one’s
finger in a map, to bring the stars near, to view the smallest insects in
a microscope, to read history, and witness the revolutions of empires
and the succession of generations, to hear of the glory of Sidon and
Tyre, of Babylon and Susa, as of a faded pageant, and to say all these
were, and are now nothing, to think that we exist in such a point of
time, and in such a corner of space, to be at once spectators and a
part of the moving scene, to watch the return of the seasons, of
spring and autumn, to hear
——‘The stockdove plain amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustles to the sighing gale’——
could be borne only amidst the fulness of hope, the crash of the fall
of the strong holds of power, and the exulting sounds of the march of
human freedom. What feelings the death-scene in Don Carlos sent
into the soul! In that headlong career of lofty enthusiasm, and the
joyous opening of the prospects of the world and our own, the
thought of death crossing it, smote doubly cold upon the mind; there
was a stifling sense of oppression and confinement, an impatience of
our present knowledge, a desire to grasp the whole of our existence
in one strong embrace, to sound the mystery of life and death, and in
order to put an end to the agony of doubt and dread, to burst through
our prison-house, and confront the King of Terrors in his grisly
palace!... As I was writing out this passage, my miniature-picture
when a child lay on the mantle-piece, and I took it out of the case to
look at it. I could perceive few traces of myself in it; but there was the
same placid brow, the dimpled mouth, the same timid, inquisitive
glance as ever. But its careless smile did not seem to reproach me
with having become a recreant to the sentiments that were then sown
in my mind, or with having written a sentence that could call up a
blush in this image of ingenuous youth!
‘That time is past with all its giddy raptures.’ Since the future was
barred to my progress, I have turned for consolation to the past,
gathering up the fragments of my early recollections, and putting
them into a form that might live. It is thus, that when we find our
personal and substantial identity vanishing from us, we strive to gain
a reflected and substituted one in our thoughts: we do not like to
perish wholly, and wish to bequeath our names at least to posterity.
As long as we can keep alive our cherished thoughts and nearest
interests in the minds of others, we do not appear to have retired
altogether from the stage, we still occupy a place in the estimation of
mankind, exercise a powerful influence over them, and it is only our
bodies that are trampled into dust or dispersed to air. Our darling
speculations still find favour and encouragement, and we make as
good a figure in the eyes of our descendants, nay, perhaps, a better
than we did in our lifetime. This is one point gained; the demands of
our self-love are so far satisfied. Besides, if by the proofs of
intellectual superiority we survive ourselves in this world, by
exemplary virtue or unblemished faith, we are taught to ensure an
interest in another and a higher state of being, and to anticipate at
the same time the applauses of men and angels.
‘Even from the tomb the voice of nature cries;
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.’