Finis coronat opus

Since my brother’s death I, like Tennyson’s Ulysses, have wanted to believe that

Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;

Death closes all: but something ere the end,

Some work of noble note, may yet be done.

Or as Bob Dylan would have it

It ain’t dark yet but it’s getting there.

Might it be the perfect love that has eluded me for more than three score years? Or the hewing out of some magnum opus? 

T S Eliot wrote

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

The bastard.

Just before I die, I want someone to light the blue touchpaper and stand well back. I want the end to crown the work.