Be Sure my Coming was a Sharp Offense

Be sure my coming was a sharp offense

And trouble to my mother in her bed; And harsh to me must be my going hence, / Though I were old and spent and better dead;

Between the awful spears of birth and death

I run a grassy gauntlet in the sun; And curdled in me is my central pith, / Remembering there is dying to be done. O Life, my little day, at what a cost

Have you been purchased! What a bargain's here!

(And yet, thou canny Lender, thou hast lost: thumb thy fat book until my debt appear:

So. art thou stuck? . thou canst not strike that through

For the small dying that a man can do! )