When Time, or soon or late, shall bring <br />The dreamless sleep that lulls the dead, <br />Oblivion! may thy languid wing <br />Wave gently o'er my dying bed! <br /> <br />No band of friends or heirs be there, <br />To weep, or wish, the coming blow: <br />No maiden, with dishevelled hair, <br />To feel, or feign, decorous woe. <br /> <br />But silent let me sink to earth, <br />With no officious mourners near: <br />I would not mar one hour of mirth, <br />Nor startle friendship with a tear. <br /> <br />Yet Love, if Love in such an hour <br />Could nobly check its useless sighs, <br />Might then exert its latest power <br />In her who lives, and him who dies. <br /> <br />'Twere sweet, my Psyche! to the last <br />Thy features still serene to see: <br />Forgetful of its struggles past, <br />E’en Pain itself should smile on thee. <br /> <br />But vain the wish?for Beauty still <br />Will shrink, as shrinks the ebbing breath; <br />And women's tears, produced at will, <br />Deceive in life, unman in death. <br /> <br />Then lonely be my latest hour, <br />Without regret, without a groan; <br />For thousands Death hath ceas’d to lower, <br />And pain been transient or unknown. <br /> <br />`Ay, but to die, and go,' alas! <br />Where all have gone, and all must go! <br />To be the nothing that I was <br />Ere born to life and living woe! <br /> <br />Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen, <br />Count o'er thy days from anguish free, <br />And know, whatever thou hast been, <br />'Tis something better not to be.<br /><br />George Gordon Byron<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/euthanasia/
