Greybeards at Play: Literature and Art for Old Gentlemen

 
Had gathered in his youth,
When trilobites were trilobites,
This all-important truth.
 
 
We aged ones play solemn parts —
Sire – guardian – uncle – king.
Affection is the salt of life,
Kindness a noble thing.
 
 
The old alone may comprehend
A sense in my decree;
But – if you find a fish on land,
Oh throw it in the sea.
 

ON THE DISASTROUS SPREAD OF ÆSTHETICISM IN ALL CLASSES

 
Impetuously I sprang from bed,
Long before lunch was up,
That I might drain the dizzy dew
From day's first golden cup.
 
 
In swift devouring ecstacy
Each toil in turn was done;
I had done lying on the lawn
Three minutes after one.
 
 
For me, as Mr. Wordsworth says,
The duties shine like stars;
I formed my uncle's character,
Decreasing his cigars.
 
 
But could my kind engross me? No!
Stern Art – what sons escape her?
Soon I was drawing Gladstone's nose
On scraps of blotting paper.
 
 
Then on – to play one-fingered tunes
Upon my aunt's piano.
In short, I have a headlong soul,
I much resemble Hanno.
 
 
(Forgive the entrance of the not
Too cogent Carthaginian.
It may have been to make a rhyme;
I lean to that opinion).
 
 
Then my great work of book research
Till dusk I took in hand —
The forming of a final, sound
Opinion on The Strand.
 
 
But when I quenched the midnight oil,
And closed The Referee,
Whose thirty volumes folio
I take to bed with me,
 
 
I had a rather funny dream,
Intense, that is, and mystic;
I dreamed that, with one leap and yell,
The world became artistic.
 
 
The Shopmen, when their souls were still,
Declined to open shops —
And Cooks recorded frames of mind
In sad and subtle chops.
 
 
The stars were weary of routine:
The trees in the plantation
Were growing every fruit at once,
In search of a sensation.
 
 
The moon went for a moonlight stroll,
And tried to be a bard,
And gazed enraptured at itself: