The heads of strong old age are beautiful <br />Beyond all grace of youth. They have strange quiet, <br />Integrity, health, soundness, to the full <br />They've dealt with life and been tempered by it. <br />A young man must not sleep; his years are war, <br />Civil and foreign but the former's worse; <br />But the old can breathe in safety now that they are <br />Forgetting what youth meant, the being perverse, <br />Running the fool's gauntlet and being cut <br />By the whips of the five senses. As for me, <br />If I should wish to live long it were but <br />To trade those fevers for tranquillity, <br />Thinking though that's entire and sweet in the grave <br />How shall the dead taste the deep treasure they have?<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/promise-of-peace/
