How dare the robins sing

      When men and women hear

Who since they went to their account

      Have settled with the year!—

Paid all that life had earned

      In one consummate bill,

And now, what life or death can do

      Is immaterial.

Insulting is the sun

      To him whose mortal light,

Beguiled of immortality,

      Bequeaths him to the night.

In deference to him

      Extinct be every hum,

Whose garden wrestles with the dew,

      At daybreak overcome!