Man's no mere scribe, who in the cloistered gloom <br />Of some old convent sits away his life, <br />Who at his trencher finds his only strife- <br />The rest fat peace-as in his narrow room <br />He writes till blinded by Time's darkening rheum. <br />An image rather find in one who leaving wife, <br />And child, and friends, proclaims war to the knife <br />With luxury, and seeks his unknown doom <br />Among the mountains, where the ages lie <br />Buried 'neath miles of monumental stone- <br />Region of distance, height, immensity- <br />Writes with his heart's blood in those spaces lone <br />His last sad message. There, where eagles cry, <br />They find his bones: far still the highest cone!<br /><br />Bernard McEvoy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/imagines-vitae/
