Scampers the dog about,
And whines, and barks, and scratches,
In order to get out.
He straightaway doth begin
To set up a doleful howling
In order to get in.
--R.K. Muntkittrick
"Now, nearly all [A.E. Houseman's] poems are about youth. Therefore they refer to something that happened to him in his youth. The great public tragedy of his youthful life was his failure to use his brains properly and to make his way directly into a distinguished career as a scholar. It might appear that his debacle in Oxford was a disaster which created most of his poetry the wish for death, the hatred of the world, the incurable loneliness, all these are the accompaniment of failure. But no, it was not that kind of failure. As one reads his poems one sees that the failure had something to do not with ambition but with love." --Gilbert Highet
"For [maidens] no grace was rated as highly as "a complexion". It is hard to picture nowadays the shell-like transparence, the luminous red-and-white, of those young cheeks untouched by paint or powder, in which the blood came and went like the lights of an aurora." --Edith Wharton, Looking Backward
"It will be good for your complexion. You should have seen me before I did it. Honest, it's better than any medicine."--Ann Landers: from a list of lines teenage boys use to break down a girl's resistance.
Or as sweet-seasoned showers are to the ground;
And for the peace of you I hold such strife
As 'twixt a miser and his wealth is found:
Now proud as an enjoyer, and anon
Doubting the filching age will steal his treasure:
Now counting best to be with you alone,
Then better'd that the world may see my pleasure;
Sometimes all full with feasting on your sight,
And by-and-by clean starved for a look;
Possessing or pursuing no delight
Save what is had or must from you be took.
Thus do I pine and surfeit day by day,
Or gluttoning on all, or all away.
--William Shakespeare, Sonnet 75
Across the schoolboy's brain;
The song and silence in the heart,
That in part are prophecies and in part
Are longings wild and vain.
And the voice of that fitful song
Sings on, and is never still:
'A boy's will is the wind's will,
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'
There are dreams that cannot die;
There are thoughts that make the strong heart weak,
And bring a pallor to the cheek,
And mist before the eye.
And the words of that fatal song
Come over me like a chill:
And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'
--Longfellow
Down on that humble boy who kept the sheep,
And sent a dove; the dove returned alone:
Youth liked the music, but soon fell asleep.
Surely, His duty now was to compel.
For later he would come to love the truth,
And own his gratitude. His eagle fell.
The boy who yawned and whistled and made faces,
And wriggled free from fatherly embraces;
To go where it suggested, and adored
And learnt from it so many ways of killing.
--W.H. Auden
Down the street towards the Hammam. Goodness gracious! people say,
What a handsome countenance! The sun has risen twice today!
And as for the the Undressing room it quivered in dismay.
With the glory of his presence see the window panes perspire,
And the water in the basin boils and bubbles with desire.
Next his belt the boy unbuckles; down it falls, and at his toes
All the growing heap of garments buds and blossoms like a rose.
Last of all his shirt came flying. Ah, I tremble to disclose
How the shell came off the almond, how the lily showed its face,
How I saw a silver mirror taken flashing from its case.
So the bathman seized the adorers and expelled them on the spot;
Then the desperate shampooer his propriety forgot,
Stumbled when he brought the pattens, fumbled when he tied a knot,
And remarked when musky towels had obscured his idol's hips,
See Love's Plenilune, Mashallah, in partial eclipse!
All the bubble hearts were broken. Yes, for them as well as me,
Bitterness was born of beauty; as for the shampooer, he
Fainted, till a jug of water set Captive Reason free.
Happy bath! The baths of heaven cannot wash their spotted moon;
You are doing well with this one. Not a spot upon him soon!
Seizes on a yellow towel growing yellower in fright,
Polishes the pearly surface till it burns disastrous bright,
And a bathroom window shatters in amazement at the sight.
Like the fancies of a dreamer frail and soft his garments shine
As he robes a mirror body shapely as a poet's line.
And they perfume him with incense and they sprinkle him with scent,
Call him Bey and call him Pasha and receive with deep content
The gratuities he gives them, smiling and indifferent.
Out he goes: the mirror strains to kiss her darling; out he goes;
Since the flame is out, the water can but freeze.
The water froze.
--James Elroy Flecker
The seat pinched his behind.
What will happen to me
If even wood is stirred?
--Strato
Man's torment and delight,
Over the level Sands of Youth
That lay serenely bright,
Their tranquil gold at times submerges
In the Spring Tides of Love's Delight.
The Net brought up, in silver gleams,
Forgotten truth and fancies fair:
Like opal shells, small happy facts
Within the Net entangled were
With the red coral of his lips,
The waving seaweed of his hair.
We were so young; he was so fair.
--Laurence Pope
"A young man, be his merit what it will, can never raise himself; but must, like the ivy round the oak, twine himself round some man of great power and interest." -- Earl of Chesterfield, Letters and Maxims of Lord Chesterfield
"[In adolescence what happens is] a kind of inundation, of invasion of the undeveloped personality, the empty (swept and garnished) room, by the stronger personality of the poet. The same thing may happen at a later age to persons who have not done much reading. One author takes complete possession of us for a time; then an other; and finally they begin to affect each other in our mind. We weigh one against another; we see that each has qualities absent from others, and qualities incompatible with the qualities of others; we begin to be, in fact, critical; and it is our growing critical power which protects us from excessive possession from any one literary personality." T.S. Eliot, Religion and Literature.
"In youth, however, the knowledge of things is only one-sided. A great work requires many-sidedness, and on that rock the young author splits." --Goethe
["whom the gods love die young."]--Menander,
fragment.
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at the threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
From fields where glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheer
After earth has stopped the ears:
Of lads that wore their honors out,
Runner whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge cup.
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
--A.E. Houseman
Upon a broken stem.
I heard them say: "What need to care,
With roses budding everywhere?"
I did not answer them.
They said: "A hundred fill the sky--
What reason to be sad?"
There was a one, whose lover fled;
I did not wait, the while they said
"There's many another lad."
--Dorothy Parker, from Death & Taxes
Byron had touched at each of Portugal, Gibralta, Malta, Sardinia; [t]ouched them lightly, seeing and judging with virgin eyes and all the unreflective vividness of being twenty-one years old. . . . Byron had little interest in columns. For him a classical Greek column would be something to carve his name on, or to sleep under. Byron, in the most old-fashioned of ways, had come in search of adventure." Stephen Minta, On A Voiceless Shore: Byron In Greece
"Be young as long as you can" --Lord Byron, letter to Hobhouse 12 December 1818
"My Own Boy, your sonnet is quite lovely, and it is a marvel that those red rose-leaf lips of yours should have been made no less for music of song than for madness of kisses. Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. I know Hyacinthus, whom Apollo loved so madly, was you in Greek days." --Oscar Wilde. letter to Lord Alfred Douglas, January 1893. [This letter was later stolen and used as evidence at Wilde's trial for crimes against nature.]
New showers of rain against new-risen suns,
New tears against new light of shining joy.
My youth, equipped to go, turns back again,
Throws down its heavy pack of years and runs
Back to the golden house a golden boy.
--Lord Alfred Douglas
Tall and blowing in the wind,
Silvered in sun and rain,
And beautifully thinned.
Twisted and gnarled as they;
But when new blossums line the bough,
The old men look away.
--David Morton
And the words to your tongue
Like the birds to Saint Frances
With darting, with dances--
Sing Late! Late!
Wait! you say, Wait!
There's still time! It's not late!
And the words all as cold
As the birds in October
Sing over, Sing over,
And wait, you say. Wait!
--Archibald Macleish
