The host of mem’ries summoned by the mind

fill up the empty waking hours of night;

an archive of one’s ill and pleasant sights

the many valleys crossed, the mountains climbed.

The greater done, the less there is to come:

a sober truth. Ahead soon comes the wall

this journey’s end! Here, nothing more, that’s all

my friend. Except that after we succumb

is there a sleep, and in the sleep, a dream?

A life adrift, upon a greater deep?

Into the dark a fearful, greater leap?

The signs, the guides, no longer what they seem?

No! I would seek a worse and better plight