Life and death, or, The creeping shadow : a lecture, silent but of sovereign power, consisting of numerous original compositions in verse and prose, and collections from ancient Manuscripts and various writers / /by Lambden Flemming ; the art of preserving health, and the particular nature of all things requisite for the life of man, drinks, diet, exercise, air, the passions, &c. &c.

  • Flemming, D. Lambden, 1839-
Date:
1873
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Life and death, or, The creeping shadow : a lecture, silent but of sovereign power, consisting of numerous original compositions in verse and prose, and collections from ancient Manuscripts and various writers / /by Lambden Flemming ; the art of preserving health, and the particular nature of all things requisite for the life of man, drinks, diet, exercise, air, the passions, &c. &c. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.

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    What's the grandeur of the earth To the grandeur of thy throne ? Riches, glory, beauty, birth, To thy kingdom all have gone. Before thee stand The wondrous band— Bards, heroes, side by side, Who darken'd nations when they died! Earth hath hosts, but thou canst show Many a million for her one : Through thy gate the mortal flow Has for countless years roll'd on. Back from the tomb No step has come; There fix'd, till the last thunder's sound Shall bid thy prisoners be unbound. Beautiful as the emblem of Mortality in the weeping infant, with the inverted torch, certainly is, that of the butterfly is no less apt in representing the soul. The purity and lightness of its nature, its ambrosial food, the gayety and splendor of its colors — above all, its winged liberty when bursting from its tomblike confine- ment, in which it appeared to sleep the sleep of death, afford so poAverful a contrast exhibited in the same crea- ture, that it could not fail to strike the intelligent among the heathen world as a fit symbol of Immortality. It is no very extravagant stretch of fancy, to imagine the souls of some gifted individuals embodied agreeably to their intellectual endowments. What a contrast might then be seen to the low, grublike, insignificant forms under which many a genius has been cloaked, in the exalted, noble, and imposing shapes which they would then assume, while others, whose vacant minds have been hid beneath a fair exterior, would sink in the