Note the breathless, fragmentary nature of these lines, as if the speaker lacked the will, the strength to finish them. The fact that he had had the strength just moments earlier to state them and that now he lacks the fortitude required merely to repeat them may be a further measure of waning strength, energy, . . . life.
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Compare this phrasing with Kurtz's fragmented statements as he is ferried away from his station and approaches his death: " 'Live rightly, die, die . . .' I listened. There was nothing more. Was he rehearsing some speech in his sleep, or was it a from some newspaper article?" (p. 117 in Bantam; p. 147 in Signet Classics) And later as Marlow relives the memory of Kurtz's final days: "And the memory of what I had heard him say afar there, with the horned shapes stirring at my back, in the glow of fires, within the patient woods, those came back to me, were heard again in their ominous and terrifying simplicity" [italics added] (p. 125 in Bantam; pages 152-153 in Signet Classics edition).
