The Despondent

My days are swifter than a steed;
They find no joy and flee away,
Like eagles hasting to the prey,
Or galleys winged with stormy speed.

I would that I had died in birth,
That I had fallen unto death,
Before I learned to love my breath,
Or taste one delight of earth.

I should have been as one unborn;
I should have flyted to the tomb,
Unheeding of my early doom
As any moth of summer morn.

Are not my days a feeble few?
Cease then from troubling! Stand apart,
And let me take some little heart
Before I sink beyond the view;

Before I go to sombre lands
Where blindness sits; to lands of night,
Where darkness is the only light,
And Sheol lifts obscuring hands.