Meditations X.34
Even an obvious and quite brief aphorism can serve to warn him that is bitten with the true doctrines against giving way to grief and fear; as for instance, Such are the races of men as the leaves that the wind scatters earthwards.59
And thy children too are little leaves. Leaves also they who make an outcry as if they ought to be listened to, and scatter their praises or, contrariwise, their curses, or blame and scoff in secret. Leaves too they that are to hand down our after-fame. For all these things Burgeon again with the season of spring;60
anon the wind hath cast them down,61 and the forest puts forth others in their stead. Transitoriness is the common lot of all things, yet there is none of these that thou huntest not after or shunnest, as though it were everlasting. A little while and thou shalt close thine eyes; aye, and for him that bore thee to the grave shall another presently raise the dirge.62
- 59.Homer’s Iliad vi. 147.
In Iliad vi. 146–149 the Trojan ally Glaucus, asked his lineage by Diomedes, compares the generations of men to leaves.
- 60.The same.
- 61.Compare Psalm 103. 16.
Psalm 103:16 has “For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more” (King James).
- 62.See iv. 48.