When I look back across the waste of years
And see how little they have left behind
Whose mighty towers, built with sweat and tears,
Are vanished as completely as the wind;
When I consider what fair years they spent
In frantic striving for a useless end,
And how, defeated in success, they went,
Leaving their sons still eager to contend, —

I say, poor lives, thus cast on empty ways!
They sought the iron crown, the place of power;
They forfeited long garlands of sweet days
To wear the diadem a little hour —
While I, at whom their grim lips curled, live on
And will be young when their last dust is gone!