Wav, I think you'll find that Thomas Hardy gave up writing novels because he didn't want to go through the agony and heartbreak that he went through when the public read his last two novels. Add to that the stress on his domestic life and a writer's sensitive ego and you can see why. He didn't give up writing, but returned to his first love, poetry.
Hardy did not look at Jude the Obscure and think to himself, well, this caps my life's work, I think I'll rest now.

Wav, I'll be very blunt, only a fool decides to stop learning. There is ALWAYS more to see, more to hear, more to discover, more to learn, there is always a BETTER poem to write, and so on and so forth.