Echo
Facing death
Not comfort, exactly. Four ways of looking at the end of a person: as nothing to us, as a proud enemy, as a name written in water, as a stone one has to imagine happy.
1 · Epicurus
Death is nothing to us. When we are, death is not come; and when death is come, we are not.Donne talks back to death in the voice of a preacher who intends to win the argument.
2 · John Donne
Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so.Keats asks for a sentence, not a victory. The sentence is an epitaph.
3 · John Keats
Here lies one whose name was writ in water.Camus starts from the absurd and still refuses a miserable last picture.
4 · Albert Camus
One must imagine Sisyphus happy.