the hue of death

Image courtesy of the author.

aye, the native hue of death.

that patient merit of so long life,

there’s the dream.

in the mind,

the dread of trouble and conscience is

no resolution.

whether suffer the will of men 

or devoutly discover death,

to be,

or not to be.

this shuffled mortal dream,

what troubles awry,

what cowards of mind and country!

what insolence!

what unworthy puzzles,

dispriz’d,

scorns of office,

the proud enterprises of suffering.

thus, to not be.

the turn is death,

that which casts its shadow on even the nobler life,

that patient merit,

the undiscovered.

the whips in coils,

the arrows tight and unfired,

thus, to not be!

to NOT be!

there is no question.

no fear of death will make a coward of me.

i see a thousand ills,

heart-ache,

pangs and shocks.

to sleep long,

to ride the current to the sea,

to not be.

what will become of country,

of man?

of troubles, of bodkin,

of puzzles, of arrows,

of dreams?

of being, of not being?

to end by calamity, 

unworthy, 

despised,

is no resolution.

death has made a coward of me,

bearing all,

losing time,

being.

to bear undeadly arrows,

or to make my quietus.

to sweat with existence among the fellow wretched,

or to sleep with untimely dreams, distant echoes of nothing,

of unbeing.

no resolution.