Oh! Postumus, my friend, my friend, The years glide swiftly to an end: No prayers can wrinkled age delay Or Death's inevitable day. Thrice yearly hecatombs of steers From Pluto's eyes can draw no tears. Sternly he holds Earth's giant brood Encircled with a gloomy flood: That flood which all must traverse soon, All we who feed on Nature's boon, Kings though we be, exempt from toil, Or needy tillers of the soil. What though we shun War's bloody plain And the hoarse surge of Adria's main; What though in Autumn's sultry hour We dread the South wind's blighting power, To black Cocytus, oozing slow And the vile Danaids we must go. Him we must view who rolls the stone Condemned eternally to groan. Earth, home, and charming wife must be Abandoned, and no cherished tree, Except the cypresses abhorred, Shall follow there their short lived lord. An heir thy Caecuban shall seize Close guarded with a hundred keys, And revelry thy floor shall stain With choicer wine than Pontiffs drain. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A PASSER-BY by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES THE MEANING OF THE LOOK by ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING DISDAIN RETURNED by THOMAS CAREW THE BOROUGH: LETTER 22. POOR OF THE BOROUGH. PETER GRIMES by GEORGE CRABBE THE BRAVEST BATTLE by CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER |