| |
| WELL, when all is said and done | |
| Best within my narrow way, | |
| May some angel of the sun | |
| Muse memorial o’er my clay: | |
| |
| “Here was beauty all betrayed | 5 |
| From the freedom of her state; | |
| From her human uses stayed | |
| On an idle rhyme to wait. | |
| |
| “Ah, what deep despair might move | |
| If the beauty lit a smile, | 10 |
| Or the heart was warm with love | |
| That was pondering the while. | |
| |
| “He has built his monument | |
| With the winds of time at strife, | |
| Who could have before he went | 15 |
| Written on the book of life. | |
| |
| “To the stars from which he came | |
| Empty handed, he goes home; | |
| He who might have wrought in flame | |
| Only traced upon the foam.” | 20 |
| |
