Just how old is your soul?
In Time's great library:
How many books have you pulled from the shelves?
How many chapters, length regardless, have you delved?
How many characters and great figures have you lived through?
How many stories have you read that you would wish to come true?
Have You Learned:
Tragedy from the life of a soldier?
Wisdom from an ancient scholar?
Terror in the description darkness, wild?
Wonder from the story of a child?
Have you seen:
Hope in the eyes of those who don't run,
Or victory from those who have both lost and have won?
~
What all have you learned from the lives of others,
Even those who have never breathed?
How many paper friends have you made?
maybe sisters or brothers?
New fathers and Mothers?
To what better lives have you cleaved?
And
Where all have you lived - but never walked?
Have you lived a life only an adventure's hero ought?
~
In this form of ink and paper how thick is your life?
In how many words and chapters does your soul fit a world's strife?
Could you fit it all on the label of a tab you pull?
Is it a notebook half empty, like a glass half full?
Or is it a large set of volumes to skim?
Maybe you have your own library just filled to the brim.
but in this way have you actually lived?
~
No matter this age of yours and the others you take, How many lifetimes does that soul of yours really make?