James Vila Blake, Sonnets from Marcus Aurelius 17

17. 

Φοβεῖταί τις μεταβολήν; τί γὰρ δύναται χωρὶς μεταβολῆς γενέσθαι, τί δὲ φίλτερον ἢ οἰκειότερον τῇ τῶν ὅλων φύσει; σὺ δὲ αὐτὸς λούσασθαι δύνασαι, ἐὰν μὴ τὰ ξύλα μεταβάλῃ; τραφῆναι δὲ δύνασαι, ἐὰν μὴ τὰ ἐδώδιμα μεταβάλῃ; ἄλλο δέ τι τῶν χρησίμων δύναται συντελεσθῆναι χωρὶς μεταβολῆς; οὐχ ὁρᾷς οὖν ὅτι καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ σὲ μεταβαλεῖν ὅμοιόν ἐστι καὶ ὁμοίως ἀναγκαῖον τῇ τῶν ὅλων φύσει; 

Is any one afraid of change? But what can come to pass or exist except by change? And what can be more after the heart of the Nature of the Universe, or more proper and familiar to it? Can you take a bath till the wood be transformed in heating your bath? Can you be fed unless the edible things be transmuted? Or what other useful thing can be attained apart from change? Do not you see, then, that alteration in your very self is a like matter, and similarly essential to the Nature of All Things? 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.18 

17. 

Consider the delicious fluency 

Of your warm marble pool. The seed, the sprout, 

The bud and flower, the foliage, the fuel tree, 

These change to bear your soft lavation out. 

First leaf and blossom wane to form the wood, 

Which then must burn to heat the temperate bath— 

Fellows in timbered aisles that stalwart stood, 

But bent in lumberman’s victorious path. 

Who feareth changes, feareth what befall 

With sweet necessitous kind service still; 

And the Lord Life in the kingdom of the All 

Questions not with you—change you shall and will. 

But each one’s haps a fervent good may do, 

As the tree burneth prosperously for you.