avoid

Mortality

14  Death Stalks the Night 
 
I bid each day farewell, aware its like,
Once gone from me, will never more return.
Ill-starred are easy ways on which the careless stroll,
Although they rank their lot a happy one.
For me, it's as though I ride an old and jaded beast,
When outstretched on a bough
The lizard basks in the blaze of noon.
Death stalks the night when friends and enemies sleep on,
And ever is afoot while we recline at ease.

 
15  The Present Hour is Yours 
 
The city's leading cleric went out to bury his friend;
Do you not see he brought no lesson from the grave?
The present hour is yours; the past, a babble of a dream;
And what remains has nothing sweet in store for you.

 
16  The Bitter Draught of Life
 
Ah, let us go, whom nature gave firm minds
And taught us to hold courage firmly fast,
To meet the fates pursuing us, that we may die at last.
The draught of life, to me it seems a bitter thing to drain;
And see, in bitter truth, we spew it out again.

17 Guidance of Confusion
 
Birth I chose not, nor old age, nor to live:
What the past grudged me shall the present give?
Here must I stay, by fates' two hands constrained,
And not leave until my leaving is ordained.
You who would guide me out of dark illusion,
You lie—your story contains nothing but confusion.
For can you alter that you brand with shame,
Or is it not unalterably the same?

 
18 Who is Saved from the Grave?
 
Age after age entirely dark hath run
When not one dawn revealed a rising sun.
Things change and pass, the world unshaken stands
With all its western, all its eastern lands.
 
The pen flowed and the fiat was fulfilled,
The ink dried on the parchment as fate willed.
Could the king his governors around him save—
Or Caesar his patricians—from the grave?

 
19 The Arrogant beneath our Feet
 
It's sorrow enough that after he roamed at will,
The days beckon a man and say,
"Leave, and enter now a grave!"
How many  times have our feet trodden beneath the dust
A brow of the arrogant, a skull of the debonair!

   
20  Life's Short Thread
 
When I would string the pearls of my desire,
Alas, life's too short thread denies them room.
Huge volumes cannot yet contain entire
Man's hope; his life is but a summary of doom.

 
21  Perish or Live in Pain?
 
Over many a race the sun's bright net was spread
And loosed their pearls nor left them even a thread.
This dire world delights us, though all sup—
All whom she mothers—from one mortal cup.
Choose from two ills: which rather in the main
Suits you? —to perish or to live in pain?

 
22  Shattered Like Glass
 
We laugh, but inept is our laughter,
We should weep, and weep sore,
Who are shattered like glass and thereafter
Remolded no more.

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