A perpetual memory and other poems: By Henry Newbolt: With brief memoirs by Walter de la Mare and Ralph Furse and a portrait by Sir William Rothenstein |
 | I. |
The Old to the Young
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| II. |
 | A perpetual memory |  |
29
The Old to the Young
Now, dear child, when childhood ends,Comes the time to weed your friends:
Not of course that they'll be told
They're too dowdy dull or old
But we must admit the truth
Life is short and youth is youth.
Half must go in any case
Topsy turvy into space,
That the rest, the happier few,
Still may walk and talk with you.
Then may this old house be heard
Kindly, if it breathe a word:
If it beg, since here you were
As beloved as you were fair,
You'll revisit still at times
These old rooms and lawns and limes,
These old people, her and him,
Till their memories are dim,
Till you too are moving West
Far from any last year's nest.
| A perpetual memory | |