Though we must die, I would not die
When fields are brown and bleak,
When wild-geese stream across the sky,
And the cart-lodge timbers creak.
For it would be so lone and drear
To sleep beneath the snow,
When children carol Christmas cheer,
And Christmas rafters glow.
Nor would I die, though we must die,
When yeanlings blindly bleat,
When the cuckoo laughs, and lovers sigh,
And O, to live is sweet!
When cowslips come again, and Spring
Is winsome with their breath,
And Life’s in love with everything-
With everything but Death.
Let me not die, though we must die,
When bowls are brimmed with cream,
When milch-cows in the meadows lie,
Or wade amid the stream;
When dewy-dimpled roses smile
To see the face of June,
And lad and lass meet at the stile,
Or roam beneath the moon.
Since we must die, then let me die
When flows the harvest ale,
When the reaper lays the sickle by,
And taketh down the flail;
When all we prized, and all we planned,
Is ripe and stored at last,
And Autumn looks across the land,
And ponders on the past:
Then let me die.
Alfred Austin (1835 – 1913) was an English journalist and a poet who was appointed Poet Laureate in 1896, after an interval following the death of Tennyson, when the other candidates had either caused controversy or simply refused the honor. It was claimed that he was being rewarded for his support for the Conservative leader Lord Salisbury in the General Election of 1895.