Sara Teasdale wrote:

When I can look Life in the eyes,
Grown calm and very coldly wise,
Life will have given me the Truth,
And taken in exchange - my youth.

Though perhaps this is more apt for the subject:

It is time to be old,
To take in sail:--
The god of bounds,
Who sets to seas a shore,
Came to me in his fatal round,
And said: 'No more!
No farther spread
Thy broad ambitious branches, and thy root.
Fancy departs: no more invent,
Contract thy firmament
To compass of a tent.
There's not enough for this and that,
Make thy option which of two;
Economize the failing river,
Not the less revere the Giver,
Leave the many and hold the few.

As the bird trims her to the gale,
I trim myself to the storm of time,
I man the rudder, reef the sail,
Obey the voice at eve obeyed at prime:
'Lowly faithful, banish fear,
Right onward drive unharmed;
The port, well worth the cruise, is near,
And every wave is charmed.'

"Terminus," by R. W. Emerson.

I was going to stick in Ulysses, by Tennyson, but I see the target has done so already...

So I'll go with this, instead.

May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind ever be at your back, May you find old friends waiting to greet you, there on the outside track We're gathered together old times to remember, 'tis but for ourselves we would grieve, So we'll sing you a chorus and bid you farewell - fair winds and a following sea.

We'll sing of 'The Leaf' and 'The Parting Glass', we'll raise up our voices in song,
No sadness today for the one who has passed, celebrate with a voice glad and strong.
A catch in the throat, a tear in the eye, but no funeral dirge will this be,
We'll roar 'Auld Lang Syne' as a victory song - fair winds and a following sea.

And those of us left here will miss a true friend, who shared with us good times and bad,
Raising a glass to your memory we'll say: “We've known you – why should be we sad?”
We honour a life that was lived to the full, we honour a spirit, now free.
You'll long be remembered, whenever we say: “Fair winds and a following sea!”
You'll long be remembered, whenever we say: “Fair winds and a following sea!”

Fair winds and a following sea, Sailor.

Bosun, Pipe the Captain away. - Neptunus Lex, Departing.

H/t to Tom Lewis for the lyric and song.

No, he's not dead. It just feels like that, when you finally let go and retire. There's relief mixed with a sense of... drowning. The hardest part is the realization that while many you served with will miss you, the organization won't hiccup. Which is a good thing. Both for our egos, and for the organization. There are plenty more myrmidons of good metal in the field sown with dragon's teeth.

Update: Our own Fuzzybee has a different view of Lex, fascinating as it stems from her non-warrior eyes. Somebody get the head clamps. When Lex reads that, there won't be any room left in the building...