Wreck not the ageing heart of quietness, <br />With alien uproar and rude jolly cries, <br />Which satyr like to a mild maidens pride, <br />Ripens not wisdom, but a large recoil, <br />Give them their withered peace, their trial grave, <br />Their old youth's three-scored shadowy effigy, <br />Mock them not with your ripened turbulence, <br />Their frost mailed petulance with your torrid wrath, <br />While edging your boisterous thunder shivers one word, <br />Pap to their senile shivering, drug to truth, <br />The feigned ramparts of bleak ignorance, <br />Experience - crown of naked majesties, <br />That tells us nought we know not - but confirms, <br />Oh think! You reverend shadowy austere, <br />Your Christ's youth was not ended when he died.<br /><br />Isaac Rosenberg<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/of-any-old-man/
