Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE OLD MAN'S PAEAN, by HORACE SMITH


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE OLD MAN'S PAEAN, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Vainly, ye libellers! Your page
Last Line: "young septuagenary!"
Alternate Author Name(s): Smith, Horatio
Subject(s): Life; Time; Truth; Youth


VAINLY, ye libellers! your page
Assaults and villifies old age,
'Tis still life's golden aera;
Its pleasures, wisely understood,
An unalloyed unfailing good,
Its evils a chimaera. --

Time's victor, I am victor still --
Holding the privilege at will
To seize him by the forelock;
On me would he return the grasp,
He finds there's nothing left to clasp --
Not even a single hoar lock. --

We blame the idolatrous divine
Who gilds and decorates his shrine,
The Deity neglected;
Yet our self-adoration blind
Is body-worship -- to the mind
No reverence directed.

Greybeards there are, who thinking art
Can conquer nature, play the part
Of adolescent friskers;
Swindlers and counterfeits of truth,
They strive to cheat us by false youth,
False teeth, hair, eyebrows, whiskers.

While to the frame due care I give,
No masquerader will I live,
To no disguises pander;
But rather seek to save from blight
My mind in all its pristine plight
Of cheerfulness and candor.

A youthful cheer sustains us old,
As arrows best their course uphold
Winged by a lightsome feather. --
Happy the young old man who thus
Bears, like a human arbutus,
Life's flowers and fruit together.

To dark oblivion I bequeath
The ruddy cheek, brown hair, white teeth,
And eyes that brightly twinkle; --
Crows' feet may plough with furrows deep
My features, if I can but keep
My mind without a wrinkle.

Young, I was never free -- my soul
Still mastered by the stern control
Of some tyrannic passion;
While my poor body, servile tool!
The livery wore of fop and fool,
An abject slave of fashion.

Thanks to thy welcome touch, old age!
Which strongest chains can disengage,
The bondman's manumitted: --
Released from labour, thraldom, strife,
I pasture in the park of life,
Unsaddled and unbitted.

If drawn for the Militia -- called
On Juries, where the heart is galled
With crime, chicane, disaster,
"Begone," I cry -- "avaunt! avast!
Thank heaven! I'm sixty, and at last
Am of myself free master."

An actor once in every strife
That agitates the stage of life,
A lover, fearer, hater,
Now in senility's snug box
I sit, aloof from all their shocks,
A passive, pleased spectator.

Free-traders, Chartists, Puseyites!
Your warfare, with its wrongs and rights,
In me no rage arouses;
I read the news, and cry, if hurt
At Whigs and Tories throwing dirt,
"A plague on both your houses!"

Tailors! avaunt your bills and spells!
When fashion plays on folly's bells,
No haddock can be deafer; --
Comfort and neatness all my care,
I stick to broadcloth, and forswear
Both Macintosh and Zephyr. --

'Tis but our sensual pleasures' zest
That time can dull; -- our purest, best
Defy decay or capture.
A landscape -- book -- a work of art --
My friends, my home -- still fill my heart
With undiminished rapture.

Fled some few years, old Time may try
Again to wake my rhyme, when I,
Obeying the vagary,
May thus subscribe the muse's frisk:
"My pensive public -- yours! -- A BRISK
YOUNG SEPTUAGENARY!"





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