On a plain

I’m on a plain / I can’t complain

Duty Surviving Self-Love
The Only Sure Friend of Declining Life
A Soliloquy

Unchanged within to see all changed without
Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt.
Yet why at others’ wanings should’st thou fret?
Then only might’st thou feel a just regret,
Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light
In selfish forethought of neglect and slight.
O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed,
While, and on whom, thou may’st — shine on! nor heed
Whether the object by reflected light
Return thy radiance or absorb it quite
And though thou notest from thy safe recess
Old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air,
Love them for what they are; nor love them less,
Because to thee they are not what they were.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge