Why should I linger in these cramping walls
And yield my being to their dull constraint?
Why should I bow before this dread disease
That creeps so slowly through my languid limbs
That it may never reach my burning heart
Before it kills the fire of my brain,
And leaves me with half-blurred, unseeing eyes?
Surely no gracious God has so decreed,
No God whose name is Love. Love could not work
For the beloved such a dire fate —
To meet the impotence of yielding flesh,
To feel the flickering of waning sense,
And yet, to know that years unending stretch
In dim succession ere all life decay.
I am no coward — I could bear even that,
If, by my living, I could ease one pain
Of one I love, or shield a single heart
To whom I owe a crumb of fealty.
But in the watches of the long black night
I take account of each and every one,
And can but see them better for the deed
Which I do purpose ere another dawn.
They who are young can have no need of me,
For what has youth to do with such as I?
Youth with its splendid, gay inconsequence —
Its laughter in the very eyes of fate,
Its daring in the face of destiny —
Youth reaches for the glove that Life throws down
And, smiling, flings it back with unconcern.
I know, for I, too, picked the gauntlet up,
Although my youth was riddled through with age —
The premature, sad age that comes with care,
And cruel disillusion with a world
That turns a cheap, inglorious, shallow cheek
To many a valiant and resentful heart.

Why should we dread this door that we call Death —
'Tis but the other end of Life, we know —
Birth at one end, we may not understand,
Death at the other end, unfathomed too —
Why should we fear to meet it, when our day
Of use in this strange world is past and gone?
I read of one who in the Antarctic cold
Wandered apart to die, because he felt
Himself a hindrance rather than a help,
With weight of sickness and of suffering —
And all the world cried, " Gallant, selfless one! "
And yet, because I lie within four walls
I may be deemed a coward, though my heart
Has struggled long, to choose the nobler way —
I, too, am selfless, nor will courage fail —
Full armored then, I greet my comrade, Death!