“ ‘Ev’n I, who these mysterious truths declare, Was once Euphorbus in the Trojan war; My name and lineage I remember well, And how in fight by Sparta’s king I fell. In Argive Juno’s fame I late beheld My buckler hung on high, and own’d my former shield.

“ ‘Then death, so call’d, is but old matter dress’d In some new figure, and a varied vest: Thus all things are but alter’d, nothing dies; And here and there the unbodied spirit flies, By time, or force, or sickness dispossess’d, And lodges, where it lights, in man or beast; Or hunts without, till ready limbs it find, And actuates those according to their kind; From tenement to tenement is toss’d, The soul is still the same, the figure only lost: And, as the soften’d wax new seals receives, This face assumes, and that impression leaves; Now call’d by one, now by another name; The form is only changed, the wax is still the same. So death, so call’d, can but the form deface; The immortal soul flies out in empty space, To seek her fortune in some other place.