Laudator Temporis Acti

E.R. Dodds, in The Moon-Worshippers, adopts the Platonic idea (Phaedo 67a, etc.) that death frees the soul from the shackles of the body. W.H. Auden, in No, Plato, No, rejects that idea, and in its place asserts the opposite, that death frees the body from the shackles of the soul.

Thanks to Nathaniel Koonce for drawing my attention to a poem by A.E. Housman, in which the poet suggests that once death destroys flesh and soul, only one part survives—man's bones:

The Immortal Part

When I meet the morning beam,
Or lay me down at night to dream,
I hear my bones within me say,
'Another night, another day.

'When shall this slough of sense be cast,        5
This dust of thoughts be laid at last,
The man of flesh and soul be slain
And the man of bone remain?

'This tongue that talks, these lungs that shout,
These thews that hustle us about,        10
This brain that fills the skull with schemes,
And its humming hive of dreams,—

'These to-day are proud in power
And lord it in their little hour:
The immortal bones obey control        15
Of dying flesh and dying soul.

''Tis long till eve and morn are gone:
Slow the endless night comes on,
And late to fulness grows the birth
That shall last as long as earth.        20

'Wanderers eastward, wanderers west,
Know you why you cannot rest?
'Tis that every mother's son
Travails with a skeleton.

'Lie down in the bed of dust;        25
Bear the fruit that bear you must;
Bring the eternal seed to light,
And morn is all the same as night.

'Rest you so from trouble sore,
Fear the heat o' the sun no more,        30
Nor the snowing winter wild,
Now you labour not with child.

'Empty vessel, garment cast,
We that wore you long shall last.
—Another night, another day.'        35
So my bones within me say.

Therefore they shall do my will
To-day while I am master still,
And flesh and soul, now both are strong,
Shall hale the sullen slaves along,        40

Before this fire of sense decay,
This smoke of thought blow clean away,
And leave with ancient night alone
The stedfast and enduring bone.

Andreas Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica
Libri Septem (Basel: J. Oporinus, 1543), p. 164