The snows and the roses of yesterday are vanished; And what is love but a rose that fades? - Edgar Lee Masters

I bought every kind of machine that's known-
Grinders, shellers, planters, mowers,
Mills and rakes and ploughs and threshers-
And all of them stood in the rain and sun,
Getting rusted, warped and battered,
For I had no sheds to store them in,
And no use for most of them.
And toward the last, when I thought it over,
There by my window, growing clearer
About myself, as my pulse slowed down,
And looked at one of the mills I bought-
Which I didn't have the slightest need of,
As things turned out, and I never ran-
A fine machine, once brightly varnished,
And eager to do its work,
Now with its paint washed off-
I saw myself as a good machine
That Life had never used.

[...] Ma invece mi elevai un poco nella vita,
e lo devo a un libro che lessi.
Ma perché andai a Mason City
Dove mi accadde di vedere il libro in vetrina,
con la copertina sgargiante che mi allettò l’occhio?
E perché la mia anima rispose al libro
Via via che lo leggevo?

At last you get in – but you hear a step:
The ogre, Life, comes into the room,
(He was waiting and heard the clang of the spring)
To watch you nibble the wondrous cheese,
And stare with his burning eyes at you,
And scowl and laugh, and mock and curse you,
Running up and down in the trap,
Until your misery bores him.