Nil Pejus est Caelibe Vita

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

What pleasures shall he ever find?
What joys shall ever glad his heart?
Or who shall heal his wounded mind,
If tortur’d by Misfortune’s smart?
Who Hymeneal bliss will never prove,
That more than friendship, friendship mix’d with love.

Then without child or tender wife,
To drive away each care, each sigh,
Lonely he treads the paths of life
A stranger to Affection’s tye:
And when from Death he meets his final doom
No mourning wife with tears of love shall wet his tomb.

Tho’ Fortune, Riches, Honours, Pow’r,
Had giv’n with every other toy,
Those gilded trifles of the hour,
Those painted nothings sure to cloy:
He dies forgot, his name no son shall bear
To shew the man so blest once breath’d the vital air.