Be sure my coming was a sharp offense

Be sure my coming was a sharp offense And trouble to my mother in her bed; And harsh to me must be my going hence, Though I were old and spent and better dead; Between the awful spears of birth and death I run a grassy gauntlet in the sun; And curdled in me is my central pith, Remembering there is dying to be done. O life, my little day, at what cost Have you been purchased! What a bargain’s here! (And yet, thou canny Lender, thou hast lost: Thumb thy fat book until my debt appear: So . . . art thou stuck? . . . thou canst not strike that through For the small dying that a man can do!)