CURTAILED

How sad it were, approaching my last day,
To recognize how little of my power
I had employed, how much was left to say—
Unrealized, unsaid at my last hour.

Though my mortality is closing in—
Three score and twelve years have already passed—
I see more clearly it would be a sin
Not to have striven to the very last.

     So let my final age be gold, not lead,
     Nor peter out, like this, before I’m dead.

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