I'm at a stage in life where both these poems now feel true.

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When I Have Fears

John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be
  Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
  Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
  Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
  Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
  That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
  Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
  Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

Mezzo Cammin

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Half of my life is gone, and I have let
  The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
  The aspiration of my youth, to build
  Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
  Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
  But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
  Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
  Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
  A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
  And hear above me on the autumnal blast
The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights.


(See also: Stephen Crane.)