Classic Poem

HERAKLES . Listen first, and show what you're made of,
my stock. My father told me long ago
that no living man should kill me,
but that someone from hell would, and
that brute of a Centaur has done it.
The dead beast kills the living me.
And that fits another odd forecast
breathed out at the Selloi's oak—
Those fellows rough it,
sleep on the ground, up in the hills there.
I heard it and wrote it down
under my Father's tree.
Time lives, and it's going on now.
I am released from trouble.

I thought it meant life in comfort.
It doesn't. It means that I die.
For amid the dead there is no work in service.
Come at it that way, my boy, what

SPLENDOUR,
IT ALL COHERES.