A Stoic Breviary

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) 

I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be The Century's corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among  The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things  Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware. 

William Wordsworth (1770-1850) 

From low to high doth dissolution climb, And sink from high to low, along a scale Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail; A musical but melancholy chime, Which they can hear who meddle not with crime, Nor avarice, nor over-anxious care. Truth fails not; but her outward forms that bear The longest date do melt like frosty rime, That in the morning whitened hill and plain And is no more; drop like the tower sublime Of yesterday, which royally did wear His crown of weeds, but could not even sustain Some casual shout that broke the silent air, Or the unimaginable touch of Time. 

IMAGE: Johann Heinrich Schönfeld, Allegory of Time (c. 1640) 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) 

Aspasie, trillistos. 

I heard the trailing garments of the Night Sweep through her marble halls! I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might, Stoop o'er me from above; The calm, majestic presence of the Night, As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight, The manifold, soft chimes, That fill the haunted chambers of the Night, Like some old poet's rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air My spirit drank repose; The fountain of perpetual peace flows there— From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear What man has borne before! Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care, And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer! Descend with broad-winged flight, The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair, The best-beloved Night!

IMAGE: Jean-Francois Millet, Starry Night (1865)

And now Pompey returned with great prestige from his expedition,⁠ and since the splendor and warmth of his reception led him to believe that he could get whatever he wanted from his fellow citizens, he sent forward a demand that the senate postpone the consular elections, in order that he might be present in person and assist Piso in making his canvass. 

The majority of the senators were inclined to yield. Cato, however, who did not regard the postponement as the chief matter at issue, but wished to cut short the attempt and the expectations of Pompey, opposed the measure and changed the opinions of the senators, so that they rejected it. 

This disturbed Pompey not a little, and considering that Cato would be a great stumbling block in his way unless he were made a friend, he sent for Munatius, Cato's companion, and asked the elder of Cato's two marriageable nieces to wife for himself, and the younger for his son. Some say, however, that it was not for Cato's nieces, but for his daughters, that the suit was made. 

When Munatius brought this proposal to Cato and his wife and sisters, the women were overjoyed at thought of the alliance, in view of the greatness and high repute of Pompey; Cato, however, without pause or deliberation, but stung to the quick, said at once:

"Go, Munatius, go, and tell Pompey that Cato is not to be captured by way of the women's apartments, although he highly prizes Pompey's good will, and if Pompey does justice will grant him a friendship more to be relied upon than any marriage connection; but he will not give hostages for the glory of Pompey to the detriment of his country." 

At these words the women were vexed, and Cato's friends blamed his answer as both rude and overbearing. 

Afterwards, however, in trying to secure the consul­ship for one of his friends,⁠ Pompey sent money to the tribes, and the bribery was notorious, since the sums for it were counted out in his gardens. 

Accordingly, when Cato told the women that he must of necessity have shared in the disgrace of such transactions, they admitted that he had taken better counsel in rejecting the alliance.⁠ 

However, if we are to judge by the results, it would seem that Cato was wholly wrong in not accepting the marriage connection, instead of allowing Pompey to turn to Caesar and contract a marriage which united the power of the two men, nearly overthrew the Roman state, and destroyed the constitution. 

None of these things perhaps would have happened, had not Cato been so afraid of the slight transgressions of Pompey as to allow him to commit the greatest of all, and add his power to that of another. 

We come to that necessity which is of destiny. First destiny itself avouched. That there has been a general consent therein of the common people and wise men; but different in part. How many ways destiny has been taken among the ancients.

Thus spoke Langius, and with his talk caused the tears to trickle down my cheeks; so clearly seemed he to behold the vanity of human affairs. 

With that lifting up my voice, "Alas," said I, "what are we or all these matters for which we thus toil? What is it to be somebody? Man is a shadow and a dream, as says the poet." 

Then spoke Langius to me, "But you, young man, do not only contemplate on these things, but condemn them. Imprint constancy in your mind amid this casual and inconstant variableness of all things. I call it inconstant in respect of our understanding and judgment; for that if you look unto God and his Providence, all things succeed in a steady and immovable order. 

"Now I cast aside my sword and come to my engines; neither will I any longer assault sorrow with handy weapons but with great ordnance, running against it with the strong and terrible ram which no power of man is able to put back nor policy to prevent. This place is somewhat slippery, yet I will enter into it, but warily, slowly, and, as the Grecians speak, with a quiet foot.

"And first that there is a kind of fatal destiny in things, I think neither yourself, Lipsius, nor any people or age has ever doubted of."

Here I interrupting him said, "I pray you pardon me if I hinder you a little in this course. What? Do you oppose destiny unto me? Alas, this is but a weak engine pushed on by the feeble Stoics. I tell you plainly I care not a rush for the destinies nor the ladies of them. And I say with the soldier in Plautus, I will scatter this troupe of old wives with one blast of breath, even as the wind does the leaves." 

Langius looking sternly on me, "Will you so rashly and unadvisedly," said he, "delude or deny utterly destiny? You are not able, except if you can at once take away the divine Godhead and the power thereof, for, if there be a God, there is also Providence; if it, a decree and order of things, and of that follows a firm and sure necessity of events. 

"How do you avoid this blow? Or with what axe will you cut off this chain? For God and that eternal spirit may not otherwise be considered of by us, than that we attribute unto it an eternal knowledge and foresight. We must acknowledge him to be stayed, resolute and immutable, always one, and like himself, not wavering or varying in those things which once he willed and foresaw. For the eternal God never changes his mind, says Homer. 

"Which if you confess to be true, as indeed you must if there be in you any reason or sense, this also must be allowed that all God's decrees are firm and immovable even from everlasting unto all eternity; of this grows necessity, and that same destiny which you deride. The truth whereof is so clear and commonly received, that there was never any opinion current among all nations. And whosoever had any light of God himself and his Providence, had the like of destiny. 

"The most ancient and wisest poet Homer, believe me, traced his divine muse in none other path than this of destiny. Neither did the other poets, his progeny, stray from the steps of their father. See Euripides, Sophocles, Pindar, and among the Latins Virgil. 

"Shall I speak of historiographers? This is the voice of them all, that such and such a thing came to pass by destiny, and that by destiny kingdoms are either established or subverted. 

"Would you hear the philosophers, whose chief care was to find out and defend the truth against the common people? As they jarred in many things through an ambitious desire of disputing, so it is a wonder to see how they agreed universally upon the entrance into this way which leads to destiny. 

"I say in the entrance of that way, because I do not deny that they follow some by pathways which may be reduced into these four kinds of destiny, namely, mathematical, natural, violent, and true. All of which I will expound briefly, only touching them a little, because from such matters commonly grows confusion and error." 

IMAGE: Alexander Rothaug, The Three Fates (c. 1910) 

If you wish to thread the needle, make the thread pointed, and remove all extraneous fibers. Then the thread will easily enter into the eye of the needle. 

So if you wish to concentrate your heart on God, be meek, humble, and poor in spirit, and remove all filaments of desire. 

IMAGE: Jules Breton, Peasant Woman Threading a Needle (1861)