An Old Man's Weariness

Arthur L. Phelps

I want to lie alone beside the sedges,
Where the dim-faced waters are quietly singing.
There is peace there, and a deep old happiness
That the drake knows when he is tired of winging
     The far heights, and avoiding
     The craft of the grey hunter.

I have long avoided the grey hunter Death,
And now I am weary and in much need of learning

What still peace is. I need the voice of the sedges
That knows not any of the old earth yearning
     And its cry, but is quiet,
     Like the air and the water.