Jamie, 1997.
© Copyright Libitina 2006.

Like drawings on the beach, the gentle flow of time takes all,
Triumph and defeat lost and won in its Lethean tide,
Each of us must drink deep of its eternal source,
For nothing is as definite as birth, chance, and death,
And though fate’s vagaries may indeed tax us all,
Still we must live life to the full before we fall.

Let us live today,
For tomorrow we shall die,
Memento mori-
Remember you must die;
Live each moment
As though it were your last-
Seize the day,
There’s no second chance.

A voice dropped from a chorus, but the melody still plays clear,
The loss is known only to those nearest who can hear,
To the rest it was just a whisper, hinted at in trust,
Rebuking our pomp, telling us we are but dust
And even as an empire must surely breathe its last,
We too will become but a state of the past.

Let us live today,
For tomorrow we shall die,
Memento mori-
Remember you must die;
Live each moment
As though it were your last-
Seize the day,
There’s no second chance.

Like names on wind-scoured tombs, time effaces all,
All our works unwritten by its unforgiving hands,
No mercy shown except by happenstance of chance,
All but the few depart as though they’d never lived,
The great and the good, the humble and the bad,
Lost to the jealous gods the lives they have had.

Let us live today,
For tomorrow we shall die,
Memento mori-
Remember you must die;
Live each moment
As though it were your last-
Seize the day,
There’s no second chance.