Classic Poem

My verses please — I thank you, friend,
That such as you my lines commend:
But is that all? — Mere empty fame
Is but an echo of a name.
To write, was my sad destiny,
The worst of trades, we all agree.
Why should I toil upon a page
That soon must vanish from the stage,
Lest in oblivion's dreary gloom,
The immensity of things to come! —
In that abyss I claim no part,
Is mine, indeed! — this beating heart
Must with the mass of atoms rest,
My fancy dead, my fires repress'd.

If God, or fate to man would give
In two succeeding states to live,
The first, in pain and sorrow pass'd,
In ease, content, and bliss, the last,
I then would rack my anxious brain
With study how that state to gain;
Each day, my toiling mind employ,
In hopes to share the promised joy.

But, since to all, impartial heaven
One fleeting life has only given,
'Twere madness, sure, that time to waste
In search of joys I ne'er can taste;
My little is enough for me,
Content with mediocrity:
It never sinks into the heart
How soon from hence we all must part.
What hope can bloom on life's last stage,
When every sense declines with age,
The eye be-dimm'd, the fancy dead,
The frost of sixty on my head,
What hope remains? — one debt I pay,
Then mingle with my native clay . . .