Henry Wadsworth Longfellow — A Quiet Life

Let him who will, by force or fraud innate,        &nbsp Of courtly grandeurs gain the slippery height;        &nbsp I, leaving not the home of my delight,        &nbsp Far from the world and noise will meditate. Then, without pomps or perils of the great,        &nbsp I shall behold the day succeed the night;        &nbsp Behold the alternate seasons take their flight,        &nbsp And in serene repose old age await. And so, whenever Death shall come to close        &nbsp The happy moments that my days compose,        &nbsp I, full of years, shall die, obscure, alone! How wretched is the man, with honors crowned,        &nbsp Who, having not the one thing needful found,        &nbsp Dies, known to all, but to himself unknown.