Let Me Live Out My Years
We speak of the comforts and ease of old age, but our noblest selves do not really desire them. We want to do more than exist. We want to be alive to the very last.
Let me live out my years in heat of blood!
Let me die drunken with the dreamer’s wine!
Let me not see this soul-house built of mud
Go toppling to the dust—a vacant shrine!
Let me go quickly like a candle light
Snuffed out just at the heyday of its glow!
Give me high noon—and let it then be night!
Thus would I go.
And grant that when I face the grisly Thing,
My song may triumph down the gray Perhaps!
Let me be as a tuneswept fiddlestring
That feels the Master Melody—and snaps.
John G. Neihardt
From “The Quest” (collected lyrics).