Explore "Uselessness" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Let mine not be that saddest fate of all / To live beyond my greater self; to see / My faculties decaying, as the tree / Stands stark and helpless while its green leaves fall. / Let me hear rather the imperious call, / Which all men dread, in my glad morning time, / And follow death ere I have reached my prime, / Or drunk the strengthening cordial of life's gall. / The lightning's stroke or the fierce tempest blast / Which fells the green tree to the earth to-day / Is kinder than the calm that lets it last, / Unhappy witness of its own decay. / May no man ever look on me and say, / "She lives, but all her usefulness is past. "