The Hymns of Orpheus · 91 of 91
LXXXVI.
TO DEATH.
The FUMIGATION from MANNA.
HEAR me, O Death, whose empire unconfin’d,
Extends to mortal tribes of ev’ry kind.
On thee, the portion of our time depends,
Whose absence lengthens life, whose presence ends.
This is the closing hymn of the entire Orphic collection, and that placement is deliberate. The Orphic religion was, more than anything, a preparation-for-death tradition. Plato calls philosophy itself “a rehearsal for dying” in the Phaedo, and the line traces back to Orphic-Pythagorean sources. The hymn’s stark imagery of death “Thy sleep perpetual bursts the vivid folds, By which the soul, attracting body holds” gives you ancient soul-body dualism in its working ritual form. In that picture the soul is what persists; the body is the binding that death undoes.
Thy sleep perpetual bursts the vivid folds, 5
By which the soul, attracting body holds: 6
Common to all of ev’ry sex and age,
For nought escapes thy all-destructive rage;
Not youth itself thy clemency can gain,
A note on this passage — part of the app, alongside narration for every book and Guide to ask when a passage stays shut.
Read it in the app Vig’rous and strong, by thee untimely slain. 10
In thee, the end of nature’s works is known,
In thee, all judgment is absolv’d alone:
No suppliant arts thy dreadful rage controul,
No vows revoke the purpose of thy soul;
O blessed pow’r regard my ardent pray’r, 15
A note on this passage — part of the app, alongside narration for every book and Guide to ask when a passage stays shut.
Read it in the app And human life to age abundant spare.
THE END.
The end · getgnosis.app
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