A Quiet Life Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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.