Some have the gift of song and some possess the gift of silver speech, <br />Some have the gift of leadership and some the ways of life can teach. <br />And fame and wealth reward their friends; in jewels are their splendors <br /> told, <br />But in good time their favorites grow very faint and gray and old. <br />But there are men who laugh at time and hold the cruel years at bay; <br />They romp through life forever young because they have the gift of play. <br /> <br />They walk with children, hand in hand, through daisy fields and orchards <br /> fair, <br />Nor all the dignity of age and power and pomp can follow there; <br />They've kept the magic charm of youth beneath the wrinkled robe of Time, <br />And there's no friendly apple tree that they have grown too old to climb. <br />They have not let their boyhood die; they can be children for the day; <br />They have not bartered for success and all its praise, the gift of play. <br /> <br />They think and talk in terms of youth; with love of life their eyes are <br /> bright; <br />No rheumatism of the soul has robbed them of the world's delight; <br />They laugh and sing their way along and join in pleasures when they can, <br />And in their glad philosophy they hold that mirth becomes a man. <br />They spend no strength in growing old. What if their brows be crowned <br /> with gray? <br />The spirits in their breasts are young. They still possess the gift of <br /> play. <br /> <br />The richest men of life are not the ones who rise to wealth and fame- <br />Not the great sages, old and wise, and grave of face and bent of frame, <br />But the glad spirits, tall and straight, who 'spite of time and all its <br /> care, <br />Have kept the power to laugh and sing and in youth's fellowship to share. <br />They that can walk with boys and be a boy among them, blithe and gay, <br />Defy the withering blasts of Age because they have the gift of play.<br /><br />Edgar Albert Guest<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-gift-of-play/
