The poem
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 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, 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 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.”