Philosophic Obscurity
Essays and novels and poems I've penned,
Autobiographies, histories three,
Jokelets and verses, and such without end,
Letters of travel on land and on sea.
No one has seen them, and see them none may;
Locked in my closet the manuscripts lie,
Sealed with instructions to fire the day,
Distant or present, on which I die.
Fame I care naught for, and fortune is mine,
Hence under lock and key let the lines rest.
Why should I give the world one single line—
World that has often neglected the best?
Why should I drive them, offspring of my brain,
Into the world with its critics severe?
Why should I seek for the woe and the pain
Certain to follow the theorist's leer?
No! I will keep them: unread let them lie;
Then when I pass through Death's mysteried portal,
How 'twill console me, reflecting, that I
Could, had I chosen, have been an immortal!
Autobiographies, histories three,
Jokelets and verses, and such without end,
Letters of travel on land and on sea.
No one has seen them, and see them none may;
Locked in my closet the manuscripts lie,
Sealed with instructions to fire the day,
Distant or present, on which I die.
Fame I care naught for, and fortune is mine,
Hence under lock and key let the lines rest.
Why should I give the world one single line—
World that has often neglected the best?
Why should I drive them, offspring of my brain,
Into the world with its critics severe?
Why should I seek for the woe and the pain
Certain to follow the theorist's leer?
No! I will keep them: unread let them lie;
Then when I pass through Death's mysteried portal,
How 'twill console me, reflecting, that I
Could, had I chosen, have been an immortal!
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