“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.