THOUGH Doctor Glen -- the best of men -- Is wrinkled, old, and gray, He'll always smile and stop a while Where little children play: And often then he tells us, when @3He@1 was a youngster, too, He was as glad and bad a lad As old folks ever knew! As he walks down, no boy in town But sees him half a block, And stops to shout a welcome out With "Here comes Uncle Doc!" Then all the rest, they look their best As he lines up among Us boys of ten -- each thinking then When Uncle Doc was young. We @3run@1 to him! -- Though grave and grim, With voice pitched high and thin, He still reveals the joy he feels In all that @3he@1 has been: With heart too true, and honest, too, To ever @3hide@1 a truth, He frankly owns, in laughing tones, He was "a sorry youth!" -- When he was young, he says, he sung And howled his level-best; He says he guyed, and sneaked, and lied, And wrecked the robin's nest. -- All this, and worse, will he rehearse, Then smooth his snowy locks And look the saint he says he ain't. . . . Them eyes of Uncle Doc's! He says, when he -- like you and me -- Was just too low and mean To slap asleep, he used to weep To find his face was clean: His hair, he said, was just too red To tell with mortal tongue -- "The Burning Shame" was his nickname When Uncle Doc was young. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A COUNTRY BURIAL by EMILY DICKINSON ODE [ON THE POETS] by JOHN KEATS SONNET TO MRS. REYNOLD'S CAT by JOHN KEATS |