An Old Man's Weariness

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.