Classic Poem

Soon as the barons shouted loud their oath
So that it could be heard both far and wide,
Dame Nature, who takes cognizance of all
That haps beneath the sky's blue covering.
Entered her workshop, busying herself
With forging individual entities
To save the species' continuity
Against the assaults of Death, who ne'er attains
The mastery, no matter how he speeds,
So many reinforcements she creates;
For Nature's reproduction follows Death
So closely that whene'er with club he kills
Some individuals who are his due —
For they are so decrepit that they have
No fear of death, since they are in decline
(They waste away in time and then decay
To furnish nourishment for other things) —
Then when Death thinks the race to extirpate
He never can get hold of all at once.
When one he seizes here, another there
Escapes him; and, when he the father kills,
A wife or son or daughter still remains,
Who, when they see the father lying dead,
Themselves in face of Death betake to flight,
Though later they must die, howe'er they flee;
For medicine and vows are nothing worth.
Nephews and nieces straightway fare afar,
Fast as their feet will carry them. They run
To seek distraction from the thought of Death:
Some to a dance, and others to a cell;
Some to a school, and others to their shops;
Some to the arts that they perchance have learned;
Others to joys in goblet, board, or bed;
Some mount their steeds with gilded stirrups decked,
Hoping to flee more rapidly from Death;
And others put their trust in wooden ships,
With due regard for starry influence,
For oars, and sails, and tackle for the boats;
And some humiliate themselves by vow
And take a mantle of hypocrisy
With which in flight they hope to hide their thoughts,
Though by their actions they're identified.
Thus all who live attempt to flee from Death —
From black-faced Death, who follows in pursuit.
They run a cruel race ere they are caught;
They flee, and Death gives chase — ten, twenty years,
Thirty, forty, fifty, sixty-five,
Yes, seventy, eighty, ninety, or fivescore —
And always crushing those whom he can seize.
Though it may seem that he has passed some by,
He ne'er forgets them but to them returns
Until, in spite of the physicians' skill,
He has them in his power. Doctors themselves
We never see escaping from Death's grasp.
Hippocrates and Galen, though both skilled,
Rhazes, Avicenna, Constantine,
All had to leave their skins; those less expert
Could salvage nothing more from Death than they.
So Death, who never can be satisfied,
Swallows each individual gluttonously.
His chase continues over land and sea
Till in the end he has engulfed them all.
But never can he get them all at once,
So fails he in his purpose to destroy
The species, which knows well how to escape:
If but a sole survivor can remain,
The common mold will live. This we may see
Well illustrated in the phoenix' case;
The species lasts, though there's but one on earth.
Always a single phoenix is alive,
Who, ere his death, has lived five hundred years;
Then at the last he builds a funeral pyre
Covered with spices, and thereon he leaps
And burns himself to death. But that the race
Of phoenixes may not become extinct,
However much the fire may burn him up,
Another phoenix from the ashes springs,
Or it may be the same one thus revived
By Nature, who this species values so
That she would lose her being if the bird
Could not be re-created when destroyed.
When Death devours the phoenix, ne'ertheless
Another phoenix still remains alive,
And would remain though thousands were destroyed.
This is but one example of the way
That Nature works new creatures to create
So that when all of them shall come to death
They will leave others still alive. 'Tis thus
That all things living 'neath the circling moon
Have come to birth; and if but one remained
The species would by it be resupplied
And so Death never would succeed to gain his end.