| Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882). Complete Poetical Works. 1893. | | | | Translations | From the French.
A Quiet Life |
| | | LET him who will, by force or fraud innate, | |
| Of courtly grandeurs gain the slippery height; | |
| I, leaving not the home of my delight, | |
| Far from the world and noise will meditate. | |
| Then, without pomps or perils of the great, | 5 |
| I shall behold the day succeed the night; | |
| Behold the alternate seasons take their flight, | |
| And in serene repose old age await. | |
| And so, whenever Death shall come to close | |
| The happy moments that my days compose, | 10 |
| I, full of years, shall die, obscure, alone! | |
| How wretched is the man, with honors crowned, | |
| Who, having not the one thing needful found, | |
| Dies, known to all, but to himself unknown. | | | | |
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