Edgar Guest's "Life's Slacker"

I decided it would be a good idea to post this. Guest is a guy I wished I was exposed to earlier that I was. He's a VERY cleaver writer. This story is no exception (taken from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/life-s-slacker/)


Life's Slacker

by Edgar Guest

The saddest sort of death to die


Would be to quit the game called life


And know, beneath the gentle sky,


You'd lived a slacker in the strife.


That nothing men on earth would find


To mark the spot that you had filled;


That you must go and leave behind


No patch of soil your hands had tilled.






I know no greater shame than this:


To feel that yours were empty years;


That after death no man would miss


Your presence in this vale of tears;


That you had breathed the fragrant air


And sat by kindly fires that burn,


And in earth's riches had a share


But gave no labor in return.






Yet some men die this way, nor care:


They enter and they leave life's door


And at the end, their record's bare—


The world's no better than before.


A few false tears are shed, and then,


In busy service, they're forgot.


We have no time to mourn for men


Who lived on earth but served it not.






A man in perfect peace to die


Must leave some mark of toil behind,


Some building towering to the sky,


Some symbol that his heart was kind,


Some roadway where strange feet may tread


That out of gratitude he made;


He cannot bravely look ahead


Unless his debt to life is paid.