Do Those Who Drink Of Lethe

Do those who drink of Lethe
Find surcease
From pain?
Or do they wrack their brain
In a vain
Attempt to regain
What is forever, lost?

O to be free of regret
And forever forget
A life ill spent.
But what cost
To drink
Of Lethe and no more think,
But merely to do
As like some automaton
We wander through
Hades
Where memory fades
And days are as one.

The departed are gone
But know it not, or perhaps they do
As tears may break through
When half remembered years
Enter the head
Of the living dead.

Al...