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shoulders, and a long while carried him rejoicing upon his arm, and offered him such gifts as kindly Elysium bears, sterile boughs and songless birds and pale flowers with bruised blossoms. Nor does he forbid him to remember thee, but fondly blends heart with heart, and takes part in turn in the affection of the lad.

It is the end: he is lost to thee. Wilt thou not now assuage thy pain and lift thy grief-sunken head? All that thou seest is dead or doomed to die; nights and days perish, and the stars, nor does the frame of the solid earth avail her. Our race is of mortal kind, and who should bewail the passing of folk whose end is sure? War claims some, the ocean others; some are victims of love, of madness, or fell desire; these winter’s freezing breath awaits, those the fierce heat of deadly Sirius, others pale Autumn with rain-bringing jaws. All that hath had beginning fears its end. Doomed are we all, ay, doomed: for shades innumerable doth Aeacus shake his urn. But he whom we mourn is happy: gods and men hath he escaped, and doubtful chance and the dangers of our dark life: he is beyond the will of Fate. He prayed not, nor feared nor deserved to die; but we, poor anxious creatures, miserable folk, we know not whence our death shall come, what our life’s end shall be, from what quarter the thunderbolt threatens, what cloud utters the sound of doom. Do these thoughts not move thee? But thou shalt be moved, and willingly. Come hither, Glaucias, who alone canst obtain all thou dost ask; leave that dark threshold, for neither the ferryman nor the comrade of the cruel beast^[1] bars the way to innocent souls;