My own dim life should teach me this, That life shall live for evermore, Else earth is darkness at the core, And dust and ashes all that is;
This round of green, this orb of flame, Fantastic beauty; such as lurks In some wild Poet, when he works Without a conscience or an aim.
What then were God to such as I? 'Twere hardly worth my while to choose Of things all mortal, or to use A tattle patience ere I die;
'Twere best at once to sink to peace, Like birds the charming serpent draws, To drop head-foremost in the jaws Of vacant darkness and to cease.
-Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam A. H. H., Canto XXXIV