The Old Man Dreams
OH for one hour of youthful joy
Give back my twentieth spring
I'd rather laugh, a bright-haired boy, Than reign, a gray-beard king
Off with the spoils of wrinkled age
OH for one hour of youthful joy
Give back my twentieth spring
I'd rather laugh, a bright-haired boy, Than reign, a gray-beard king
Off with the spoils of wrinkled age
Sharded in black, like beetles,
Frail as antique
One breath might shiver to bits,
The old women creep out
My old flame, my wife
Remember our lists of birds
One morning last summer,
I droveby our house in Maine
An old house, crumbling half away, all barnacled and lichen-grown,
Of saddest, mellowest, softest grey,—with a grand history of its own— Grand with the work and strife and tears of more than half a thousand years
Such delicate, tender, r...
There was an Old Man of Peru,
Who never knew what he should do;
So he tore off his hair,
And behaved like a bear,
(The refrain is quoted by Edward Fitzgerald inone of his
Growing, growing, all the glory going;
Flashing out of fire and light, burning to a husk,
All the world's a-dying and failing in the dusk--
There was an Old Man of Calcutta,
Who perpetually ate bread and butter;
Till a great bit of muffin,
On which he was stuffing,
There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, 'It is just as I feared
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
There was an Old Person of Chili,
Whose conduct was painful and silly,
He sate on the stairs,
Eating apples and pears,
There was an old man of Tobago,
Who lived on rice, gruel and
Till, much to his bliss,
His physician said this -To a leg, sir, of mutton you may go
What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this
Do they somehow
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,
The London lights are far
Behind a bank of cloud,
Along the shore the gaslights gleam,
The gale is piping loud;