Let It Go Hence

When Lewis's mother died when he was nine years old, his father saved the page from their Shakespeare calendar that said "Men must endure their going hence, even as their coming hither: ripeness is all" It is said by King Lear in Act V and refers to being prepared for death.

In Out of the Silent Planet, the first book of Lewis's sci-fi Ransom Trilogy, when one of the hrossa is killed by an evil human who has come to Malacandra (Mars) from earth, they have a funeral service and they sing "Let it go hence, let it go hence; Let it be no body."

Lewis's epitaph in the churchyard at Headington Quarry reads "Men must endure their going hence."