Canto XXXIV

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