It is likely enough that lions and scorpions <br />Guard the end; life never was bonded to be endurable nor the <br />act of dying <br />Unpainful; the brain burning too often <br />Earns, though it held itself detached from the object, often a <br />burnt age. <br />No matter, I shall not shorten it by hand. <br />Incapable of body or unmoved of brain is no evil, one always <br />went envying <br />The quietness of stones. But if the striped blossom <br />Insanity spread lewd splendors and lightning terrors at the end <br />of the forest; <br />Or intolerable pain work its known miracle, <br />Exile the monarch soul, set a sick monkey in the office . . . <br />remember me <br />Entire and balanced when I was younger, <br />And could lift stones, and comprehend in the praises the cruelties <br />of life.<br /><br />Robinson Jeffers<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/ante-mortem/
