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