What ho, hot heart of mine: to beat thus lustily awhile, to feel in the red rushing blood, and then be ashes,--can this be so?
But peace, peace, thou liar in me, telling me I am immortal--shall I not be as these bones?
To come to this! But the balsam-dropping palms, whose boles run milk, whose plumes wave boastful in the air, they perish in their prime, and bow their blasted trunks.

Nothing abideth; the river of yesterday floweth not to-day; the sun's rising is a setting; living is dying; the very mountains melt; and all revolve:--systems and asteroids; the sun wheels through the zodiac, and the zodiac is a revolution.

Ah gods! in all this universal stir, am _I_ to prove one stable thing?
"Grim chiefs in skeletons, avaunt! Ye are but dust; belike the dust of beggars; for on this bed, paupers may lie down with kings, and filch their skulls.

_This_, great Marjora's arm?
No, some old paralytic's.

_Ye_, kings?
_ye_, men?
Where are your vouchers?
I do reject your brother-hood, ye libelous remains.