A nearly empty glass hourglass stands upright on pale grey ground with a tiny golden grain at its narrow centre.

Original artwork, not a still

War Shrines

George Santayana

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

Birth and death cannot be remedied, the speaker says, so the only sensible response is to savor the stretch between them. The line treats mortality as a fixed condition rather than a problem to solve, and turns attention to the brief, ordinary time we actually have.

Context reviewed

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