Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I'm feeling a touch maudlin and sentimental, and that can only mean one thing: it's time for Tennyson.  I have no defense of the following poem except to say that I like it.  It possesses the virtues of my current mood (which is to say maudlin, sentimental, excessive, inflated).  It practically bleeds pathos.  My love for it flies in the face my (admittedly mild) convictions about what constitutes good poetry.  These convictions have never inhibited my affection for Tennyson, for whom such  grandiose locution was more-or-less standard.

One can, of course, defend this diction.  It's been suggested -- I want to say by Aldous Huxley but can't confirm it on the internet -- that this poem would be vastly inferior and far less moving had its fourth line concluded, "and after many a summer dies the duck." 

In Greek mythology, Tithonus was the beloved of Eos, goddess of the dawn.  Because of her ardor, she requested that Zeus grant him immortality.  Unfortunately, she  forgot to insert the vital condition that this eternal life be accompanied by eternal youth.