W H Auden - Thomas Hardy - Edward Fitzgerald - T E Lawrence - Jacques Barzun - Gloria Swanson - Richard Dawkins -
The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews
Not to be born is best for man. W H Auden, Death’s Echo, 1937
I rose at night, and visited
The Cave of the Unborn:
And crowded shapes surrounded me
For tidings of the life to be.
Who long had prayed the silent Head
To haste its advent morn
Their eyes were lit with ardent trust,
Hope thrilled their every tone:
‘A scene the loveliest, is it not?
A pure delight, a beauty spot
Where all is gentle, true and just,
And darkness is unknown?’
My heart was anguished for their sake.
I could not frame a word;
And they descried my sunken face,
And seemed to read therein, and trace
The news that pity would not break,
Not truth leave unaverred.
And as I silently retired
I turned and watched them still,
And they came helter-skelter out,
Driven forward like a rabble rout
Into the world they had so desired,
By the all-immanent Will. Thomas Hardy, The Unborn
Had I the ear of wombed souls
Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,
And thou wert free
To cease, or be,
Then would I tell thee all I know,
And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so? ... Thomas Hardy, To an Unborn Pauper Child
Ah, fill the cup: – what boots it to repeat
How time is slipping underneath our feet:
Unborn TOMORROW, and dead YESTERDAY
Why fret about it, if TODAY be sweet! Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubdiyat of Omar Khayyam
Isn’t it true that the fault of birth rests somewhat on the child? I believe it's we who led our parents on to bear us, and it’s our unborn children who make our flesh itch. T E Lawrence
If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real. Jacques Barzun, American educationalist & historian
I feel sure that unborn babies pick their parents. Gloria Swanson
We are staggeringly lucky to find ourselves in the spotlight. However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn’t this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will never even be offered life in the first place? Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion p361