On My Forty Seventh Birthday Poem by Peter Russell

I have survived this long
Though none has heard my song,
And I shall sing until
Silence becomes my will,
Because I feel no more
The spur that can prolong
My ride upon that steed
Imagination freed
Upon Parnassus Hill.

Paralysis or death
Alone will stop my breath.
Then I shall be content
Helpless to be sent
Further on my way
Out of sight of night or day.

Singing silently I'll go
Whether in the shades below
With Proserpine and Pluto,
Or in the City of the Sun
Or William Blake's Jerusalem,
Singing with angelic hosts
Epics of departed ghosts;
Or in Yeats' Byzantium
Cruising by the dangerous coasts
Where sage and angel come,
Where the cliffs are spiritual fire
Consuming all of nature's mire,
Where the long-remembered hero,
God and goddess careless go,
Sword in sheath, in hand a lyre,
Mind a ferment, heart a glow,
For nothing doth immortals tire.

Now with mud upon my boots
I taste late autumn's fruits -
Some are sweet and some are bitter -
All the past is now mere litter.

All that now remains to do -
Shoot the rapids, my canoe!
Downstream runs the river of life -
You're alone, you have no wife
To hold your hand or make your bed
When you are carried over the falls
And plunge beneath those dreadful walls -
And strike the earth and know you're dead.

So I sing and will keep singing
Till I hear the loud bells ringing
-For my long-awaited death,
-For my first ecstatic breath -
In a night that shall be dawn,
On a death-bed, man reborn.