If ever I more riches did desire
Than cleanliness and quiet do require,
If e'er Ambition did my fancy cheat
With any wish so mean as to be great,
Continue, Heaven, still from me to remove
The humble blessings of this life I love.
Upon the slippery tops of human state,
The gilded pinnacles of fate,
Let others proudly stand, and for a while
The giddy danger to beguile,
With joy and with disdain look down on all,
Till their heads turn, and down they fall.
Me, O ye gods, on Earth, or else so near
That I no fall to Earth may fear;
And, O ye gods, at a good distance seat
From the long ruins of the great.

Here wrapt in the arms of quiet let me lie;
Quiet, companion of obscurity.
Here, let my life with as much silence slide
As time that measures it does glide.
Nor let the breath of Infamy and Fame
From town to town echo about my name;
Nor let my homely death embroidered be
With scutcheon or with elegy.
An old plebeian let me die,
Alas, all then are such as well as I.
To him, alas, to him I fear
The face of Death will terrible appear,
Who in his life flatt'ring his senseless pride
By being known to all the world beside,
Does not himself, when he is dying, know,
Nor what he is, nor whither he's to go.