What Life to Choose?

What life to choose?

What life is right?

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A peredhel must make a choice—

Immortality,

Or mortality.

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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.

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To be mortal is to live until you die,

To see only a few years,

To encounter fewer things,

To feel age, temporary

Finite.

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What choice is the better one?

Which will give you the greater reward?

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An immortal grows weary of life,

Life that he has lived for so long,

Wishing it may end.

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But a mortal longs for eternal youth,

Life that is infinite,

Wishing it could go on.

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Immortals never forget;

They remember everything a person has done,

Who helped them,

Who wronged them.

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Mortals will always forget.

Once they die, they have no more memory,

And others will also soon forget them.

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Eternity or ephemerality?

Unending days or numbered days?

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Immortality or mortality?

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