Death as a guest
On the day when death will knock at thy door what wilt thou offer to him?
Oh, I will set before my guest the full vessel of my life--I will never let him go with empty hands.
All the sweet vintage of all my autumn days and summer nights, all the earnings and gleanings of my busy life will I place before him at the close of my days when death will knock at my door.
Think continually how many physicians are dead after often contracting their eyebrows over the sick; and how many astrologers after predicting with great pretensions the deaths of others; and how many philosophers after endless discourses on death or immortality; how many heroes after killing thousands; and how many tyrants who have used their power over men's lives with terrible insolence, as if they were immortal; and how many cities are entirely dead, so to speak, Helice and Pompeii and Herculaneum, and others innumerable. Add to the reckoning all whom thou hast known, one after another. One man after burying another has been laid out dead, and another buries him; and all this in a short time. To conclude, always observe how ephemeral and worthless human things are, and what was yesterday a little mucus, to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through this little space of time conformably to nature, and end thy journey in content, as an olive falls off when it is ripe, blessing nature who produced it, and thanking the tree on which it grew.
"Si quaeras Helicen et Burin Achaidas urbes,Invenies sub aquis."
The Editors’ note
Both meet death without dread. Tagore receives death as a guest at the door and resolves to set before him the full vessel of his life. Marcus Aurelius, after counting how physicians, philosophers, heroes and whole cities have died, asks to end his journey content, as a ripe olive falls blessing the nature that produced it.
Tagore offers his life to death as a gift, the harvest of all his days. Marcus accepts its end as the order of nature, and reaches that acceptance by reflecting on how brief human things are.