Page:Modern poets and poetry of Spain.djvu/99

Rh "Let him, who power or honours would attain,

On the high court's steep precipice remain.

I wish for peace, that solitude bestows,

Secluse to enjoy the blessings of repose.

To pass my life in silence be my fate,

Unnoticed by the noble, or the great:

That when my age, without vain noise or show,

Has reach'd the bounds allotted us below,

Though a plebeian only to pass by,

Perhaps I yet an aged man may die.

And this I do believe, no death of all

Than his more cruel can a man befall,

Who dying, by the world too truly known,

Is of himself most ignorant alone."

, with whom a Piedmontese

A wandering living made,

A dance he had not learn'd with ease,

On his two feet essay'd: