Middle-age

The sins of Youth are hardly sins,
So frank they are and free.
'T is but when Middle-age begins
We need morality.

Ah, pause and weigh this bitter truth:
That Middle-age, grown cold,
No comprehension has of Youth,
No pity for the Old.

Youth, with his half-divine mistakes,
She never can forgive,
So much she hates his charm which makes
Worth while the life we live.

She scorns Old Age, whose tolerance
And calm, well-balanced mind
(Knowing how crime is born of chance)
Can pardon all mankind.

Yet she, alas! has all the power
Of strength and place and gold,
Man's every act, through every hour,
Is by her laws controlled.

All things she grasps with sordid hands
And weighs in tarnished scales.
She neither feels, nor understands,
And yet her will prevails!

Cold-blooded vice and careful sin,
Gold-lust, blind selfishness, -
The shortest, cheapest way to win
Some, worse than cheap, success.

Such are her attributes and aims,
Yet meekly we obey,
While she to guide and order claims
All issues of the day.

You seek for honour, friendship, truth?
Let Middle-age be banned!
Go, for warm-hearted acts, to Youth;
To Age, - to understand!

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Adela Florence Nicolson, better known by her pen name Laurence Hope, was an English poet who gained popularity in the early 20th century for her verse inspired by Indian themes and settings. She was born on April 9, 1865, in Stoke Bishop, England. Nicolson's work is often associated with themes of love, longing, and the exoticism of the East. She tragically ended her own life on October 4, 1904. Despite her short life, her poetry left a lasting impact and continues to be read and appreciated.

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Malay Song

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

Valgovind's Song in the Spring

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

The Teak Forest

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

My Desire

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Youth And Age.

YOUTH.

Pilgrim of life! thy hoary head
    Is bent with age, thine eye
Looks downward to the silent dead,
    Wreck of mortality!--
The friends who flourished in thy day
    Have sought their narrow home;
Their spirits whisper, "Come away!"--


AGE.

    My soul replies, I come.--
I tread the path I trod a child,
    The fields I loved of yore;
The flowers that 'neath my footsteps smiled
    Now meet my gaze no more.
I stand beneath this giant oak!
    It was an aged tree,
Hollowed by time's resistless stroke,
    When life was green with me.
Its lofty head it proudly rears
    To greet the summer sky,
Whilst, bending with the weight of years,
    I feebly totter by.
And hushed are all the thousand songs
...

Susanna Moodie

Mrs. Effingham's Swan Song.

    I am growing old: I have kept youth too long,
    But I dare not let them know it now.
    I have done the heart of youth a grievous wrong,
    Danced it to dust and drugged it with the rose,
    Forced its reluctant lips to one more vow.
    I have denied the lawful grey,
    So kind, so wise, to settle in my hair;
    I belong no more to April, but September has not taught me her repose.
    I wish I had let myself grow old in the quiet way
    That is so gracious....    I wish I did not care.
    My faded mouth will never flower again,
    Under the paint the wrinkles fret my eyes,
    My hair is dull beneath its henna stain,
    I have come to the last ramparts of disguise.
    And now the day draws on of my defeat.
    I shall not meet
    The swift, ...

Muriel Stuart

Youth

I am not sure if I knew the truth
    What his case or crime might be,
I only know that he pleaded Youth,
    A beautiful, golden plea!

Youth, with its sunlit, passionate eyes,
    Its roseate velvet skin -
A plea to cancel a thousand lies,
    Or a thousand nights of sin.

The men who judged him were old and grey
    Their eyes and their senses dim,
He brought the light of a warm Spring day
    To the Court-house bare and grim.

Could he plead guilty in a lovelier way?
His judges acquitted him.

Adela Florence Cory Nicolson

Morituri Salutamus - Poem For The Fiftieth Anniversary Of The Class Of 1825 In Bowdoin College

Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis,
Et fugiunt freno non remorante dies.--OVID, Fastorum, Lib. vi.


"O Caesar, we who are about to die
Salute you!" was the gladiators' cry
In the arena, standing face to face
With death and with the Roman populace.

O ye familiar scenes,--ye groves of pine,
That once were mine and are no longer mine,--
Thou river, widening through the meadows green
To the vast sea, so near and yet unseen,--
Ye halls, in whose seclusion and repose
Phantoms of fame, like exhalations, rose
And vanished,--we who are about to die
Salute you; earth and air and sea and sky,
And the Imperial Sun that scatters down
His sovereign splendors upon grove and town.

Ye do not answer us! ye do not hear!
We are forgotten; an...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Age

This ugly old crone -
Every beauty she had
When a maid, when a maid.
Her beautiful eyes,
Too youthful, too wise,
Seemed ever to come
To so lightless a home,
Cold and dull as a stone.
And her cheeks - who would guess
Cheeks cadaverous as this
Once with colours were gay
As the flower on its spray?
Who would ever believe
Aught could bring one to grieve
So much as to make
Lips bent for love's sake
So thin and so grey?
O Youth, come away!
As she asks in her lone,
This old, desolate crone.
She loves us no more;
She is too old to care
For the charms that of yore
Made her body so fair.
Past repining, past care,
She lives but to bear
One or two fleeting years
Earth's indifference: her tears
Have lost now their...

Walter De La Mare

Neither!

So ancient to myself I seem,
I might have crossed grave Styx's stream
A year ago; -
My word, 'tis so; -
And now be wandering with my sires
In that rare world we wonder o'er,
Half disbelieve, and prize the more!

Yet spruce I am, and still can mix
My wits with all the sparkling tricks,
A youth and girl
At twenty's whirl
Play round each other's bosom fires,
On this brisk earth I once enjoyed: -
But now I'm otherwise employed!

Am I a thing without a name;
A sort of dummy in the game?
"Not young, not old:"
A world is told
Of misery in that lengthened phrase;
Yet, gad, although my coat be smooth,
My forehead's wrinkled, - that's the truth!

I hardly know which road to go.
With youth? Perhaps. With age? Oh no!
Well,...

Rose Hawthorne Lathrop