Explanation:

Why should a man desire in any way

To vary from the kindly race of men,

Or pass beyond the goal of ordinance

Where all should pause, as is most meet for all?

Answer: These lines have been derived from the finest dramatic monologue, “Tithonus” composed by the poet laureate and the representative poet of the Victorian Age, Lord Alfred Tennyson. Here the speaker, Tithonus reveals his own mentality and deplores a human being who wants to be immortally violating the law of God.

Tithonus is sick of an immortal life in which he grows older and older. He is in a gloomy mood. When he gets the gift of immortality, it never occurs to him that he will not stop growing old. So he is disillusioned. He no longer finds any charm in Aurora, his beloved now. He finds that nature changes and are always changing. The forests decay. The dew drops fall to the ground. The swan dies. But he alone lives as a silent witness to the changes that happen in nature. He has already lost his luster. His youth is gone. With the fading of his youth, his personal charms are also gone. He has fallen into grief and untold suffering. Tithonus wonders at his own form. He is now what he was not. His present form is a mockery of his youth. Aurora loves him and grants him the boon of immortality. But now he wants to be free. He requests her to take back the gift that she has given him. He implores her to let him go back to earth. He does not like to be an exception to the rule of mortality. He wants to die and not to live and suffer the passage of time forever. He is unwilling to violate the true law.

In fact, Tennyson says that man should do what is not beyond one’s ability and power.