The Last Years

The Last Years written by William Henry Davies

From "The Loneliest Mountain", 1939

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A dog, that has ten years of breath,
Can count the number left to me,
   To reach my seventy as a man.
In five years' time a bird is born,
Whose shorter life is then my own,
   Reducing still the human span.

Soon after that, a butterfly,
Who lives for but a year or less,
   Reminds me that the end is near;
And that, when I have lived his life,
A shorter life is still to come -
   Which brings the Summer's insect here.

And when at last that insect comes,
That lives for but a single day,
   He makes my life his very own:
Man, dog, and bird and butterfly,
And insect yield their separate lives -
   And Death takes all of us as one.

This work is in the public domain in countries where the copyright term is the author's life plus 70 years or less.