LIFE is a gift that most of us hold dear: I never asked the spiteful gods to grant it; Held it a bore -- in short; and now it's here, I do not want it. Thrust into life, I eat, smoke, drink, and sleep, My mind's a blank I seldom care to question; The only faculty I active keep Is my digestion. Like oyster on his rock, I sit and jest At others' dreams of love or fame or pelf, Discovering but a languid interest Even in myself. An oyster: ah! beneath the quiet sea To know no care, no change, no joy, no pain, The warm salt water gurgling into me And out again. While some in life's old roadside inns at ease Sit careless, all unthinking of the score Mine host chalks up in swift unseen increase Behind the door; Bound like Ixion on life's torture-wheel, I whirl inert in pitiless gyration, Loathing it all; the one desire I feel, Annihilation! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE DARKNESS OF EGYPT by MARIA ABDY PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 89, 90. MU'HTI, MANI'H by EDWIN ARNOLD VERSES WRITTEN ON THE BACK OF AN OLD VISITATION COPY OF ARMS by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD A BUDDING MORROW by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN LOVE AMONG THE RUINS by ROBERT BROWNING THE UNKNOWN WIND by DOROTHY BURGESS |