The Last Years

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.