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What Life to Choose  by Calenlass

What Life to Choose?

What life to choose?

What life is right?

-

A peredhel must make a choice—

Immortality,

Or mortality.

-

To be immortal is to live until the world ends,

To see the years of Arda pass,

To encounter many things,

To feel ageless, endless,

Eternal.

-

To be mortal is to live until you die,

To see only a few years,

To encounter fewer things,

To feel age, temporary

Finite.

-

What choice is the better one?

Which will give you the greater reward?

-

An immortal grows weary of life,

Life that he has lived for so long,

Wishing it may end.

-

But a mortal longs for eternal youth,

Life that is infinite,

Wishing it could go on.

-

Immortals never forget;

They remember everything a person has done,

Who helped them,

Who wronged them.

-

Mortals will always forget.

Once they die, they have no more memory,

And others will also soon forget them.

-

Eternity or ephemerality?

Unending days or numbered days?

-

Immortality or mortality?

-

Peredhel, man lîn? Na Alfirin egor fireb?

The End


Translations:

Peredhel – half-elf

Man lîn? – What is your choice?

Na – to be

Alfirin – immortal

Egor – or

Fireb - mortal





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