‘. . . that we mortals should dread the
tomb—that’s only natural. And it’s when we are nearing the end that what may be
called the real takes on another colour, sir. You look at those about you and
can’t any more so surely rely on what they are, if you take me. As you once
could. There is so thin a crust, sir, in a manner of speaking, between being
awake and asleep—very fast asleep indeed. A sip of a doctor’s drug, and not
only the lantern goes out but everything it shone on. I had that experience
myself not more than a month or two since—only a decayed tooth, sir: outer
darkness, and then the awakening. If that comes. It is like as if we
were treading a flat fall of untrodden snow and suddenly it is thin ice—cat ice,
as we used to call it when we were boys—and we are gone. Not, mind you, that
the waters of death, however cold they may be, are not—well, the waters of
life. Faith is faith. . . .’
Walter de la Mare, ‘Strangers and Pilgrims’ (1936)
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