Daily writing prompt
What are your thoughts on the concept of living a very long life?
For the full text of Tennyson’s Tithonus see: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45389/tithonus
If it were as a shadow, I'd accept The gift of living a very long life: Though gifted only in a thought that crept In my ear as if escaped from the strife It sought to save me from: being ended Too soon, or too long in a long-dead mind Its decaying body confined to bed, Surviving just. The fate of humankind. Tennyson's Tithonus felt that he was 'Here at the quiet limit of the world, A white-hair'd shadow roaming like a dream The ever-silent spaces of the East, Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn'. But dreams-and-shadow kind only the mind Ever conceived, as if from lead it could breed Gold, or life from dead matter. Bodies, kind Of, fail into exhausted spurts of seed With nothing left of life or joy in them To savour now - or maybe that's just men. Tithonus knows if he were just shadow To be 'far folded mist' would be a boon Once your shadow was absorbed in shallow Exhalations of the earth. But the moon Once risen showed that he was body still Time used as its fodder, but could not kill. Did he feel justly beaten That he was only eaten By the morning dawning light That makes him a baneful sight : 'Me only cruel immortality Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms'.
With Love
Steven xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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