Day after weary day he spent in his bed, 

surrounded by the startling, snowy white, 

too weak to do aught else. 

Age had taken its slow toll,

and now he wished for nothing more 

than to slip into Death's sweet embrace. 

He had requested it of his love time and again, 

wringing tears from her torn heart;

but her tender selfishness resisted. 

So his heart continued to beat, 

his blood to flow, his breath to persist, 

pushed on by machinery and medicine.