| |
| I KNOW not why my soul is rack’d: | |
| Why I ne’er smile as was my wont: | |
| I only know that, as a fact, | |
| I don’t. | |
| I used to roam o’er glen and glade | 5 |
| Buoyant and blithe as other folk: | |
| And not infrequently I made | |
| A joke. | |
| |
| A minstrel’s fire within me burn’d. | |
| I’d sing, as one whose heart must break, | 10 |
| Lay upon lay: I nearly learn’d | |
| To shake. | |
| All day I sang; of love, of fame, | |
| Of fights our fathers fought of yore, | |
| Until the thing almost became | 15 |
| A bore. | |
| |
| I cannot sing the old songs now! | |
| It is not that I deem them low; | |
| ’T is that I can’t remember how | |
| They go. | 20 |
| I could not range the hills till high | |
| Above me stood the summer moon: | |
| And as to dancing, I could fly | |
| As soon. | |
| |
| The sports, to which with boyish glee | 25 |
| I sprang erewhile, attract no more; | |
| Although I am but sixty-three | |
| Or four. | |
| Nay, worse than that, I’ve seem’d of late | |
| To shrink from happy boyhood—boys | 30 |
| Have grown so noisy, and I hate | |
| A noise. | |
| |
| They fright me, when the beech is green, | |
| By swarming up its stem for eggs: | |
| They drive their horrid hoops between | 35 |
| My legs:— | |
| It’s idle to repine, I know; | |
| I’ll tell you what I’ll do instead: | |
| I’ll drink my arrowroot, and go | |
| To bed. | 40 |
| |
