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I enjoy poetry and recently discovered Tennyson's Ullysses which I have to say is quite a poem about someone disdaining decline! Ulysses It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name; For always roaming with a hungry heart Much have I seen and known; cities of men And manners, climates, councils, governments, Myself not least, but honoured of them all; And drunk delight of battle with my peers, Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy. I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this grey spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought. This my son, mine own Telemachus, To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle— Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil This labour, by slow prudence to make mild A rugged people, and through soft degrees Subdue them to the useful and the good. Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere Of common duties, decent not to fail In offices of tenderness, and pay Meet adoration to my household gods, When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail: There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners, Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me— That ever with a frolic welcome took The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old; Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; Death closes all: but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks: The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends, 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- I then discovered Edna St Vincent Millay's poem "Dirge without music" which I think is one of the best evocations of the pain death from a humanist point of view. Dirge without music I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and laurel they go: but I am not resigned. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust. A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew, A formula, a phrase remains - but the best is lost. The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love - They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve. More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world. Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind: Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave. I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- So inspired I produced this - it isn't really a poem: its no rhyme or structure and I doubt the cadences will travel well ... but what the heck I thought I'd post it here! Anyone else got any favourite poems about life, birth and death whether written by themselves or others? [Awaits crude limericks from the peanut gallery] I am gone: it is a natural thing. Was my going cruel, or a mercy? But even if a mercy My going would be cruel, For you only say such things of ends mercifully relieved. Was it sudden, or lingering? At home, or hospice, or with tubes and machines? However it was, its rawness touches you now as it cannot touch me. I am gone, of me little will soon remain, I will be dust and soil and the things that live and grow there, And those that eat them too. Where I was there is now just a void Which I want you to try to fill with memories of laughter, and smiles, And getting on. Memories which now make the tears come. And sometimes you will think I am still here, But it is not true for I am in this box and gone. But yet something does remain; My life may have reached its end, But the things I did and created linger still And I can still influence you through your memories of me Now left in your care. I hope that what I leave behind will have some permanence. And that you will pass on my inheritance to others; And that they will want to make it theirs to pass on again. Remember me, fondly. Remember the emotions I caused and cause. Those impulses then and now are what made me a part of you. And with my death they are all that remain.
