The mantle of life slips away,
And beauty men worshipped of yore
Becomes but inanimate clay.
There’s reason in all things save death,
And no one knows why that should be;
What is there mysterious in breath,
That it should so suddenly flee?
Nay, ask not the bent, aged form,
The cripple, the starving, the weak,
But he whose life-blood courses warm,