Classic Poem

Let me the cup of Lethe drink
As I to underworlds pass down.
If I must live, I would not think,
But that one memory would drown.

Better than all if I might sleep,
And be no more in all the years:
The cup of life I would not keep,
Since ever it has brimmed with tears.

But since that may not be, at least
Let me forget that dreadful day
When in my heaven of hope there ceased
My one star's brightly shining ray.

It rose upon me in my night
With such a joyous, hopeful gleam
That, so it still continued bright,
I cared not what else proved a dream.

A little while it gleamed and shone
And filled me with its dear delight:
Then, on a sudden, it was gone,
And I walked on in rayless night.

A traveller, coming from afar,
Told me a tale of how he'd seen,
Guiding another life, the star
That once my cynosure had been.

My brain is maddened at the thought!
And, since it is no longer mine,
Its beauty must be worse than naught,
However sweetly it may shine!

No other now can glad mine eye:
My heart has room for only this.
And since the longing may not die,
And life holds now no more of bliss.

Let me at least forget; and so,
No longer torn with useless strife,
Let me through all the future go
As one who had no former life!