Definition Aureate – the color of gold

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

Norman Cousins (1915-1990)

A story is told by Bede the Venerable, on the comment of an advisor to King Edwin of Nortumberland

“Your Majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter’s day with your thains and counselors. In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside the storms of winter rain or snow are raging. This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another. While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a moment of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came. Even so, man appears on earth for a little while; but of what went before this life or of what follows, we know nothing.”

(from: blogsite: https://hokku.wordpress.com/2013/02/05)

Fitzgerald’s verses had profound effects on those of W. B. Yeats and Ernest Dowson and we can trace the ideas both backwards in time and forward by their effects on subsequent literature.