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The finest poetic treatment of the sadness of Tithonus over his immortal old age is in Tennyson's "Tithonus." The following are a few lines from this poem, which should be read in its entirety:—

"Let me go; take back thy gift;
Why should a man desire in any way
To vary from the kindly race of men,
Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance
Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?

* * * * *

"Coldly thy rosy shadows bathe me, cold
Are all thy lights, and cold my wrinkled feet
Upon thy glimmering thresholds, when the steam
Floats up from those dim fields about the homes
Of happy men that have the power to die."