My friends, why should we live?
⁠Life is an idle war, a toilsome peace;
To-day I would not give
⁠One small consent for its securest ease.

Shall we outwear the year
⁠In our pavilions on its dusty plain,
And yet no signal hear
⁠To strike our tents and take the road again?

Or else drag up the slope
⁠The heavy ordnance of religion's train?
Useless, but in the hope
⁠Some far remote and heavenward hill to gain.