Days of penury and sorrow alternate with nights of toil!
Countless crowds those portals enter, breathing aspirations high—
Youthful, ardent, self-reliant—each believing triumph nigh;
Countless crowds grow wan and weary, and within those portals die!
Ay, of all who enter thither, few obtain the proffered prize,
While unblest, unwept, unhonored, undeveloped genius dies!
Genius which had else its glory on remotest ages shown—
Beamed through History’s deathless pages, glowed on canvas, lived in stone—
Yet along Ambition’s way-side, fills it many a grave unknown!
But, perchance thou pinest only for those grottoes old and hoar,