Let The Weary World Go Round

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Let the weary world go round!
What care I?
Life's a surfeiting of sound:
I would die.
It would be so sweet to lie
Under waving grasses,
Where a maiden's footstep sly,
Tremulous for a lover nigh,
Sometimes passes.

Why, why remain?
Graves are the sovereign simples
Against life's pain;
 Graves are the sheltering wimples
Against life's rain;
Graves are a mother's dimples
When we complain.

O Death! beautiful Death!
Why do they thee disfigure?
To me thy touch, thy breath,
Hath nor alarm nor rigour.
Thee do I long await;
I think thee very late;
I pine much to be going.
Others have gone before;
I hunger more and more
To know what they are knowing.

Heart, heart! be thou content!
Accept thy banishment;
 Like other sorrows, life will end for thee.
Yet for a little while
Bear with this harsh exìle,
And Death will soften and will send for thee.

© Alfred Austin