“Thoughts on the Occasion of Mr. Johann Friedrich von Funk's Untimely Death” (1760)

Summary

Highborn wife of the cavalry captain,

Gracious Lady!

If people living amidst the turmoil of their practical affairs and diversions were occasionally to mix in serious moments of instructive contemplation, to which they are called by the daily display of the vanity of our intentions regarding the fate of their fellow citizens: thereby their pleasures would perhaps be less intoxicating, but their position would take up a calm serenity of the soul, by which accidents are no longer unexpected, and even the gentle melancholy, this tender feeling with which a noble heart swells up if it considers in solitary stillness the contemptibleness of that which, with us, commonly ranks as great and important, would contain more true happiness than the violent merriment of the flippant and the loud laughing of fools.

But thus the greatest crowd of human beings mixes very eagerly in the throng of those who, on the bridge that Providence has built over a piece of the abyss of eternity and that we call life, run after certain bubbles and do not trouble to take caution for the planks, who allow one after another to sink beside each other into the depths whose extent is infinity and by which they themselves, in the midst of their impetuous course, are eventually engulfed. In the portrayal of human life, a certain ancient poet brings forth a stirring breath by describing the newly born human being.